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The federal government on Tuesday in Abuja said it is set to evacuate another set of Nigerian immigrants from Libya in February.

This was disclosed by Bandele Onimode, who is the deputy director for search and rescue at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), when he led a delegation from NEMA to visit Abike Dabiri-Erewa, senior special assistant to the president on foreign affairs and Diaspora.

The delegation had come to shed light on the efforts of the agency in rescue operations in Libya and other countries of the world and what the federal government has been doing to secure the lives of Diaspora Nigerians trapped on transit.

According to him, the federal government has been doing a lot to help Nigerian citizens wherever they are having problems not just in Libya alone.

It is a well known fact that Nigerians do cross the desert to Europe through Niger Republic, Mali, and Sudan and in the process some are tired, stranded and trapped, he said, adding that our Nigerian missions abroad never leave them alone they always come to their rescue, as I am talking to you there are still some of them that are stranded in Niger and we are working on that.

He said the federal government had already evacuated about 1000 voluntary returnees from Libya between 2015 and 2016.

The NEMA boss added that 325 returnees were evacuated in May 2015, while 669 returnees were evacuated four times in 2016.

He explained that 175, 160, 172, 162 returnees were evacuated from Libya, in August, October, and December 2016 respectively.

According to him, most of the returnees were from Delta and Edo, ranges between the ages of 16 and 22, there are cases of infants being accompanied by their mothers.

He said that there were also cases of injured that were evacuated and returned to the country, adding that such people were properly profiled by the Nigerian Immigration service.

He said that the agency was working with other sister agencies which include the DSS, the police, FAAN, and NAPTIP to sort out the cases of victim of trafficking.

He explained that the International office on Migration (IOM ), in conjunction with Libya, always helped in sorting out of the returnees.

They are different from deportees, they are organized and willing returnees that are kept by IOM before being returned in collaboration with the Federal Government to the country, he Onimode further stressed.

He said that the agency was going to set up an assessment team to ensure that Nigerians that are set to be arrested in those countries are sorted and brought back to home.

Dabiri-Erewa called on Nigerians especially parents to warn their children and wards against embarking on illegal migration through Libya and the desert to the UK.

The issue of migration through Libya, Morocco is very dangerous for now and we advise Nigerians to desist from such dangerous adventure, because a lot of times a lot of these black migrants are dumped into the sea, she asserted.

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FG sets February deadline to evacuate immigrants from Libya - BusinessDay