As the world celebrates the World Migrants Day, Patriotic Citizens Initiative (PCI), an NGO, has urged Nigerians to embrace safe and regular migration.
Mr Osita Osemene, PCI Executive Director, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Wednesday.
He said that over one million Nigerians were stranded across the world due to irregular migration, or travelling without valid documents.
Osemene said that some Nigerian youths were in prison, some enslaved into prostitution while others stranded for several reasons.
“It will be highly appropriate to state that migration is good if it is done rightly, but recent global migration trend tends to counter it.
“Do we celebrate the gains or the pains of migration when over the years, the country has lost its teeming youths/ population to irregular migration.
ALSO READ: Education, enterprise, health, roads top Kwara’s N162bn budget of ‘reconstruction’
“It will surprise you that the statistics of my Nigerian brother’s and sisters in Libya before the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) evacuation began was over 70,000.
“But they have succeeded in returning over 15,000 since the past two years.
” A lot have lost their lives on transit due to torture and slavery while many are stranded in various detention camps.
“It may interest you to know that the trend is taking several dimensions as youths seek other alternatives and routes to leave the shores of the country.
“Hence the North African route seems difficult now, a large number of people are now migrating to Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon unknowingly to them what will befall them,” he said.
Osemene, who is also the National Public Relations Officer, Network Against Child Trafficking, Abuse and Labour (NACTAL), urged the government to educate its citizens more on the evil of irregular migration.
According to him, the concept of migration has put many Nigerian youths into jeopardy as a result of desperation, misinformation, lack of good governance.
(NAN)
and then