Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari
has said only three of the 26 migrants who died in the Mediterranean and were
buried in Italy recently were Nigerians.
Buhari said this during a meeting he
had with members of the Nigerian community in Cote d’Ivoire on Tuesday evening
in Abidjan.
The President is in the country for
the 5th European Union-African Union Summit.
Buhari said,
It was announced that 26 Nigerians
died but before they could proved that they were all Nigerians, they were
buried.
But the evidence I got from my
Senior Special Assistant on Diaspora Affairs now is that only three were
identified as Nigerians. But I won’t be surprised if the majority of them were
really Nigerians.
For people to cross the Sahara
Desert to go into shanty boats across the Mediterranean Sea, I think we will
try and keep them at home.
But for anyone who dared the desert
and the Mediterranean without document to prove that he/she is a Nigerian,
there is nothing we can do, absolutely nothing.
In the interview some of you saw,
some of the Nigerians said they were being sold like goats for a few dollars
for years in Libya. Now after 43 years of Gaddafi where he recruited so many
people from the Sahel including Nigeria and so on, all they learnt was how to
shoot and kill. They didn’t learn to become electricians, plumbers or any other
trade.
So, when the Libyans stood against
their leader, those who are not their people, they chased them out. A lot of
them came back home with their workers, some of them participated in Boko Haram
and become part of Boko Haram.
Buhari admitted that security still
remains Nigeria’s problem.
He said his administration has been
engaging in talks with leaders of Niger Delta because of the importance of the
region to the nation’s economy.
I am telling you that our
major problem as we have identified is still the security of the country. We
have done much better; everybody is saying that.
We are talking very regularly with
the Niger Delta and the leadership because they know they are holding the
throat of the country economically, he said.
Buhari urged Nigerians living in
Côte d’Ivoire to be good ambassadors of Nigeria by obeying the law of their
host country.
For you to be good ambassadors of
our dear country, it is to live by the law of the country as much as possible.
Report the bad eggs here among you
quietly to the embassy so that we can get them and repatriate them home as the
ambassador has said,
the President said.
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