No fewer than 241 Nigerians on Tuesday, August 23 were voluntary returned from Libya.
The returnees arrived the international wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport(MMA), Lagos on board a Libyan Airlines A333 –200 with registration number SA –LAR about 3.30 pm
According to the Head of Lagos Office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Dr Nahashon Thuo, the 241 voluntary returnees were brought back from Libya on their own volition.
He said the 241 voluntary returnees comprises of 174 males, 67 women and among these numbers are three children and three infants.
The IOM Representative in Lagos, disclosed that some of the returnees were trying to cross to Europe but failed and that they were arrested by the Libyan Immigration while others committed immigration offences while in the country.
He noted that they were brought by IOM when they signalled their interest to return home.
Speaking at the airport, the director of Relief and Rehabilitation National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Aliyu Sambo, said the Voluntary Returnees were brought back to the country by IOM because they indicated interest in returning to Nigeria.
He stated that the Voluntary returnees, who were in track suit provided by IOM would be given $50 after the agency officials must have talked to them.
According to one of the returnees, who was assisted into a waiting NEMA ambulance, he was shut in Libya by the man he was working for.
He said it was good he came back.
Most of the returnees looks like people who have been kept in camps for days before they were airlifted to Nigeria by IOM.
Apart from very few of them who are still looking good, majority of them, carried bushy beards and hairs on their head.
The returnees on alighting from the Libyan Airlines were directed into a waiting bus that will convey them to where documentation would take place.
On hand to receive the returnees includes Nigeria Immigration Service, (Port Health from the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Agency against Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIPs).
