While 24 deported persons (23 males and I female) were arriving at the Lagos Cargo Airport on Tuesday 20.09.22, another batch of 40 deported persons (38 males and 2 females) were confronted with a stranded situation after a seven days quarantine period in an Abuja Hotel. The group of 40 persons were received by officials of the Nigerian Immigration service at the Abuja Airport on Wednesday 14.09.22.
While the most recent deportation of the 24 persons (23 males and 1 female) was a German wide deportation operation, the previous deportation of 40 persons (38 males and 2 females) was a joint EU charter deportation operation hosted by Germany. 19 among the 40 deportation was enforced by Germany, followed by Austria with 9 and then Italy and Netherlands with 6 respectively.
From our interactions with the deported persons in quarantine, it was clear that not less than 80% of the deportation enforced from Germany involved asylum seekers who have lived in Germany for more than 5 years. This was a re-affirmation of Germany`s deliberate attempt to massively deport as many as possible asylum seekers who should have been eligible for the many months debated asylum compromise “Chance Aufenthalt” to be passed into Law very soon. The yet to be passed asylum compromise is projected by the New coalition Government as an opportunity to regularize the many who had as at January 2022 survived 5 years of the German asylum limbo.
One could witness the trauma and total frustration as the deported persons narrated their different experiences of violence and abuse from the time of their arrest and onboard the deportation flight. Some of them were even picked up from their working places and deported with just their working cloths. Others were arrested during a deceptive official appointment, on the street or around midnight while they were in Bed.
To at least relieve them of their worries about how to continue their journey further after the quarantine period, a Team of DERS Volunteers had visited the deported persons to disburse funds in facilitation of their further travel from Abuja. The scene of their checking out from the hotel was very pathetic as grown men could not hold back tears as they gathered in front of the Hotel at about 11am on that Wednesday. The situation became chaotic with some of the deported persons as the hotel management finally implored the services of mobile police officer to get them all out of the hotel premises.
Some deported persons narrated the traumatic situation of a mentally sick person as he was seen heading towards the overhead bridge to probably end up under the bridge. There were also cases of persons who had sustained different kinds of injuries through the German police violence. One of them with severe bruises on both his hands and legs had disappeared a few days after their arrival in the quarantine Hotel, another young man who sustained severe ankle joint injuries was arrested and deported even without working aid. He narrated his experience with the hospital as he refused been operated with his hands chained on the Hospital Beds based on his bad experiences with the police here in Germany. He finally found his way to the German embassy in Abuja and then to GIZ from where he received no meaningful help.
The Nigerian embassy in Berlin is once again engaging in such dubious deportation collaboration to facilitate massive deportation of Nigerian who have been living and working here in Germany for many years. Such collaboration had in 2012 led to an occupation of the Nigeria embassy in Berlin. We are hereby sending a strong signal to the embassy to withdraw from such corrupt and colonial practices of issuing electronic travel certificate without any official confirmation of the identity of assumed Nigerians.
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