IOM facilitates voluntary return of 17,359 Nigerian migrants

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) facilitated the voluntary return of 17,358 Nigerian migrants from 22 countries under the EU-IOM joint Initiative for Migrants Protection and Reintegration Programme from April 2017 to January 2021.

This was contained in the Statistical summary of returned Nigerian migrants since inception of the project which is being funded by the European Union and implemented by IOM.

The figure including 17,352 from 18 Africa countries and seven from four European countries of France, Ireland, Poland and Austria is made up of 10141 males and 7218 females, with ages ranging from 0 – 66 years.

A breakdown of the figure released in March indicated that 14,269, representing 82.2 percent of the total figure were from Libya; 2251, representing 13 percent from Niger, 290 from Mali, 255 from Morocco, 103 from Chad, while three European countries, notably, Ireland, Poland and Austria recorded the lowest figures of one each.

Of the total figure, 15,566 were adults, made up of 9, 268 males and 6, 298 females; 1,171 children made up of 574 males and 1,171 females and 622 infants, made up of 299 males and 323 females.

The highest figure of 4,291 voluntary returnee migrants was recorded in the last quarter of 2017, followed by the last quarter of 2018 with 1,593, while the lowest figures of two and 24 were recorded in the second quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2017 respectively.

According to the statistics, the returnees were provided with immidiate assistance, such as onward transportation, medical support and counseling.