A DISAGREEMENT between Nigeria and Ireland’s immigration personnel resulted in children being effectively taken into Garda custody in Lagos last week, it has been alleged.
According to a source on the latest deportation flight to Nigeria, a number of children on board were being ‘repatriated’ to Nigeria to reunite with parents who’d been previously deported – but they ended up having to stay with gardaí.
The Nigerian Immigration Service allegedly refused to take the children, indicated the source, and there was no one at Murtala Muhammed Inter-national Airport to collect them. “They [gardaí] had to bring them out into a car,” said the source. “God only knows where they’ve been taken.”
Around seven children were affected, and it remains unclear if some were Irish citizens, how the situation was resolved, or if their parents had been contacted.
Meanwhile, adult deportees had to pay fines to the Nigerian Immigration Service in order to avoid jail, it was alleged.
On Wednesday 25 February last, 34 people were deported from Ireland to Lagos on a charter flight. According to the Department of Justice, eight were adult males, 15 were adult females and 11 were children. There were also 45 Nigerian deportees from the UK, five from Switzerland and two from Germany.
The price for the charter was €268,245, of which Ireland will pay approximately €105,000.
The department said that all further queries on the deportation were a matter of the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB).
The Nigerian Immigration Service and the GNIB failed to respond to the allegations by press time.
The Nigerian Embassy in Dublin maintained that queries on alleged fines and arrangements for returned children could only be considered for response if outlined in an “official letter”.
– Catherine Reilly
