A NIGERIAN boy who lived in Ireland for over two years after his mother’s deportation has been reunited with her in Nigeria, Metro Eireann has learned.
Iyabo Nwanze, who was deported from Ireland in March 2005, was reunited with her son Emmanuel – now aged 10 – earlier this summer, after a separation of over two years.
Formerly based in Athlone, Co Westmeath, Nwanze and her friend Elizabeth Odunsi made national headlines after they were deported to Lagos without some of their children on 14 March 2005. Three of Odunsi’s four children are still in Ireland.
Asked about allegations that the separation had been planned in order to halt their deportation, Nwanze, speaking last week from Nigeria, strongly refuted such suggestions.
“We were asked to report to Athlone Garda Station, not knowing that day was going to be D-day,” she said. “There was no need for us running, because we felt that when you are asked to do something, you do it. When we got there they took our phones off us and that was it.”
It has never been independently verified how exactly the children were left behind, with the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) claiming the women did not co-operate with them, and the women and their supporters insisting that this was not true.
Both women were deported with one child both aged five at the time.
Nwanze’s son Emmanuel was just eight when he was separated from his mother, and gradually became increasingly distressed. Nwanze said she decided it was best for her son to return to Nigeria, and he arrived back in June. “Somebody just took him for me – because he was sick,” said Nwanze, referring to her son’s emotional problems.
“I was the happiest woman on earth,” she added, when asked to recall the moment she saw her son again. “He doesn’t like it here, but we don’t have a choice.”
She said her son’s return had been purely a family decision, and had not been influenced by the Irish authorities: “It was just our decision, they didn’t put any pressure. He was always saying he wanted to see me.”
Following the deportation, many Athlone locals campaigned for the return of Iyabo Nwanze and Elizabeth Odunsi – who were popular in the area, having arrived in Ireland claiming asylum in 2001 – and the story even made it onto the pages of Time magazine.
They were part of possibly the most controversial deportation in the history of the Irish State. On the same deportation flight were Dublin student Kunle Elukanlo and Castle-blayney-based Nkechi Okolie and her three children, who all had significant support in their respective localities. The then Justice Minister Michael McDowell famously allowed Kunle Elukanlo to return to Ireland to sit his Leaving Certificate, and he remains in the State today pending further challenges to his deportation.
Supporters of Odunsi and Nwanze had hoped an alternative government may have looked more sympathetically at their case, but the failure of Labour and Fine Gael to seize power in May’s general election dampened such hopes.
Elizabeth Odunsi does not want to speak to the media at present, and it is unclear whether her children will return to Nigeria. Gardai have previously stated that the children are not being treated as ‘missing’.
Nwanze confirmed that the children have been cared for by members of the Nigerian community in Ireland, who were ensuring they were schooled, clothed and fed. She said that Odunsi, like herself, is still struggling with life in Nigeria and doesn’t have regular work.
“I don’t know what to say any more because I just felt it was an injustice, and there are still people there in Ireland, that came at the same time, that didn’t have Irish-born [children] that are still there today,” she said.
“Whatever it is, maybe God has a reason for it. Apart from Kunle, so many other people who were in Athlone, they are still there today… I feel so sad, and I feel cheated. It’s an injustice, an inhumanity to man. We’d started integrating, we felt more like Irish citizens.”
She said she still has faith that one day herself and Elizabeth Odunsi may be allowed to return to live in Ireland: “Well, we are praying and we are believing… The Bible says the heart of the king is in His hands – if God could touch the new minister, and his heart has mercy upon those of us who were deported, if everything is in the hands of God, it’s possible.
“Ordinarily, physically, if we look at it, it seems no way is it possible, but spiritually in the sight of God, if the hand of God is in it, it is possible.
