No Nigerian was arrested by South African Immigration —Consul General

Nigeria’s Consul General in Johannesburg, Goodwin Adama, has denied reports that Nigerians who were returning from South Africa through the free flight made availabl, were arrested by South African Immigration.

About 640 Nigerians had reportedly indicated their interest in returning home through the free flight from the Southern African country, after foreigners, including Nigerians, became the target of renewed xenophobic attacks, leading to killings, looting and burning of business premises belonging to foreigners.

However, only 187 Nigerians returned to the country on the inaugural flight, with reprorts making the rounds that South African authorities frustrated efforts by many of the wary Nigerians from making the homebound trip.

Adama, who spoke to reporters via the telephone from his Johannesburg base on Friday, however refuted the claim, insisting that no returnee was detained or refused to board the flight on Wednesday by South African Authorities.

He said, though some had immigration problems, they were quickly fixed.

According to Adamantly, what happened was that many of the returnees missed the flights because of their uncoordinated attitudes, adding that the delay in the evacuation process was caused by misplacement of travel documents as required by South Africa immigration laws.

“Some will still tell you that they put their documents inside bags that had been checked into the plane; some even said that they had theirs stolen and all that.

“Then others have issues of expired passports,’’ he said.

The Consul General further added that the evacuation process was difficult, and that the second batch flight had to be rescheduled to enable those who had issues with their documents resolve it.

“We did not transport anybody on Thursday.

“We are waiting to prepare properly because we lost some spaces in the aircraft on Wednesday due to the attitudes of some of our people.

“If you give instructions, they will not follow; calling them, they will not pick; even when they hear their names, they will not respond.

“So, because of documentation, a lot of people missed the flight but nobody was detained.

“Everybody that had issue with immigration was resolved and we ensured they all travelled.’’

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Adama, however, admitted that there were obstacles in the process and that there were hitches at one point or the other, but that the mission solved every problem and everybody travelled.

He explained that some of the returnees were interrogated by the immigration but the mission secured their release.

Speaking further, the envoya said that there was a case of a woman, who wanted to travel with children that were not her own, adding that the case was treated as that of human trafficking.

“We equally resolved that too as the father of the children came to the airport for identification,’’ he said.

According to him, the mission was working to ensure that all seats in the expected aircraft were occupied and that the manifest would be ready before the plane comes again.

“We want to ensure that we have more than enough passengers as we do not want more seats to be empty.

“We are liaising with the South African authorities too; we are putting up a joint meeting with the host immigration service and other protocols.

“We are all on the same page before the next exercise.

“The next batch of passengers will not be Friday because we are not prepared for that but we want to finalise and send them the manifest.’’

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