Igbo Deportee From Lagos Dies, Five Others in Critical Health Condition

Residents of Onitsha, Anambra State, were greeted with the sight of 67 persons later discovered to have been deported from Lagos, Wednesday, July 24.

The deportees, majority of whom were of Igbo extraction were dumped like helpless refugees at the popular Upper Iweka area of the commercial city.

On enquiry, they disclosed that they were arrested by officials of Lagos State Kick Against Indiscipline,KAI from various parts of Lagos. They further stated that they were detained in different prison custody for a period of six months to two years before they were brought into Onitcha at about 3.20am.

From their looks, it was discovered that majority of them were not beggars after all.Some of them were discovered to be hawkers whose goods were reportedly seized by KIA officials.But owing to the trauma, they looked pale, malnurished and sick.

When news of the deportation spread across the state, officials of the Nigerian Red Cross Society led by its South East zonal chairman, Dr. Peter Emeka Katcy, arrived the scene at about 6am,where they began a section of interview with the deportees apparently to ascertain their claims.

By noon, relatives of the some of the deportees surged Onitsha, where a total of 41 of them were taken to their different family houses while the Red Cross team whisked the remaining 18 to Onitsha South Local government township Stadium, where they were given first aid treatment and food.

At the stadium, more relatives of the remaining deportees arrived on daily basis, from outside the state, identified their own and took them home. Some of them who were certified medically fit and could find their ways home, were given transport fare .

We were treated like criminals in our own country--deportees

Speaking with Crime Guard, the deportees expressed regrets that a thing like this was happening in a country they were citizens. They accused KIA officials of carrying out indiscriminate arrests of non-indigenes of Lagos, adding that majority of those detained in various local government cells in Lagos State were Igbos.

According to one of the deportees who gave her name as Rosemary Nathaniel, a native of Ubakala in Umuahia, Abia State, "I was neither a beggar nor a hawker for the past five years I lived in Lagos. I was working at a T-shirt weaving centre at Mile 2, Lagos and I lived with my sister. But in January this year, KAI officials and some policemen arrested me and my friend while we were standing and discussing on the road. We were dragged into their waiting vehicle and taken to a prison at Alausa area of Lagos.