SOUTH African government yesterday deported 90 Nigerians for allegedly committing immigration-related offences in the country.
According to DSP Joseph Alabi, the spokesman of the Lagos Airport Police Command , the deportees ,who were all men, landed at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos at about 3.30pm.
He said they were brought back to Nigeria from Johannesburg aboard a South African Airways aircraft with registration number BBB712 He said : “This afternoon, about 3.30pm, 90 Nigerians were deported from South Africa for committing immigration-related offences. Some of them were alleged to have been living in the country without the prerequisite documents.
“They were received by the appropriate agencies including the police and profiled before being allowed to depart to their respective destinations.
“ This deportation is coming barely three days after another batch of 258 Nigerians were deported from Libya. The deportees who arrived the cargo section of the Muritala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos at about 10.00pm aboard an Airbus A333-200 and were received at the Hajj Terminal by the National Emergency Management Agency narrated how they were brutalized like animals in Libya.
Mr Akhere Ken, one of the deportees from Edo State, said he had been in detention in Libya in the past one year after he was arrested on board a boat while trying to cross the Mediterranean sea to Italy. He said about 100 of them were cramped into a room not enough to accommodate 20 people with resultant suffocation to death of one inmate almost every week.