(By Olusegun Adeniyi) - In the past three weeks, no fewer than a thousand
Nigerians have been deported from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium,
South Africa and Libya. Meanwhile, we are still awaiting the deluge that will
come from the United States given the resolve of President Donald Trump to
unleash a policy of “settlers and indigenes” on his country. It doesn’t matter
that his own grandfather, Friedrich Trump, in 1905, wrote a letter to the
German authorities begging that he and his family be spared the pain and
humiliation of deportation.
If you excuse the diplomatic blunder in issuing an
American travel warning which is not within her remit, I still believe the
Special Adviser to the President on Diaspora, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa has done
well on the issue of Nigerian deportees from abroad. But it is time the
authorities began to find a lasting solution to the problem of our citizens
who, desperate to get out of Nigeria, now find themselves in a bind in foreign
lands where they are no longer welcome.
