While many countries are opening their hands to receive remittances from their nationals across the world, which is huge enough to impact their economies, Nigeria has been receiving batches of returnees who are running away from sufferings and killings in transit places and countries they presumed to be ‘greener pastures’.
The country has received a total of 11,494 returnees in 2018, out of which 10,180 were from Libya, according to the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants & Internally Displaced Persons (NCRMI).
This year, the number is increasing as the sufferings are getting worse, more killings, dashing of hopes and forcing die-hard immigrants to forgo their overseas ambitions and return home voluntarily to face the realities, which they were running from.
On March 14, 2019, a batch of 174 Nigerians who arrived from Libya was received by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). Since then more are retuning. Of interest recently are the 600 Nigerians, who are voluntarily returning from South Africa due to the spate of ‘Afrophobic’ attacks that have resulted in the loss of lives and properties of foreigners in some parts of the country.
Obviously, the South African attacks are Afrophobia instead of xenophobia because they have been targeted against fellow Africans as other foreigners have not been attacked.
Of course, the first batch of 187 returnees from South Africa arrived in Nigeria on September 11, 2019 and thanks to Air Peace, the Nigerian commercial airline carrier that volunteered to evacuate the returnees free of charge, and promised to continue the evacuations until all the volunteered returnees are back to the country.
However, most of the returnees are in dilemma. They are back to the labour market or rather on the streets, which they left happily sometime ago in the quest for the ‘good life’ abroad. While it takes courage to return to face the hardship at home, so many Nigerians refused to return voluntarily for the fear of survival back home.
Currently, the rate of unemployment in Nigeria stands at 23.1 percent, representing about 46 million people, which is almost the size of the entire South African population.
Most Nigerians are concerned that the returnees would further boost the soaring rate of unemployment in the country, as well as, crime rate.
“These returnees are not happy coming back with nothing and the worse is that there is no readymade job for them. They will join the labour market to hustle alongside every other jobless person in the country, hence they are vulnerable to crime if they stay long without job. You should bear in mind that the high rate of unemployment was among the factors to drove them abroad”, Kingsley Mordi, a lawyer said.
The lawyer thinks that crime rate will soar in the last quarter of 2019 because of the usual rush to meet end of year demands and many of the jobless in the society including returnees from Libya and South Africa are also looking to impress their families like others who are gainfully employed.
Toeing Mordi’s line, Leonard Ekwujuru, a business man, noted that some of the returnees, who were involved in crime in South Africa, would continue here even if you are giving them good jobs. “Some of the bad eggs among them may join kidnapping or robbery gang because they believe it is all about survival and the advantage now is that they are in their fatherland where police can be settled, and security could be compromised in their favour. They are not running anywhere again”, he stated.
Idris Muhammed, coordinator, National Emergency Management Agency, Lagos Territorial Office, thinks otherwise. Judging with the fact that over 4,900 returnees, especially from Libya have been trained to acquire different skills under the Assisted Voluntary Returnees Programme, which began in April 2017, he thinks the returnees have somewhere to start from once again.
In same vein, while receiving the first batch of returnees from South Africa at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos on Wednesday, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, chairman, Nigeria Diaspora Commission, assured that the government was ready to assist them to settle back in the country through its various social intervention programmes.
“The Bank of Industry had also been mobilised to assist those willing to acquire vocational skills”, Dabiri-Erewa assured at the airport.
But Mideh Ejuru, an entrepreneur and vocational trainer, said that most of the South African returnees may not consider any of the skills under the Assisted Voluntary Returnees Programme, especially those who run businesses that were affected in South Africa.
“Switching from buying and selling to acquiring vocational skill is not easy, especially if your business was booming before. I think most of them will prefer financial assistance to start their business again to acquiring the skills now”, he said.
Sulemon Ajibade, a mechanic, whose brother, also a mechanic, was among the returnees, noted that it would be a waste of effort to send people who have already acquired skills to learn new ones. “They said bank is going to assist, let the bank give those with skills money to buy tools, equipment and pay for workshop space”, he advised.
Justice Idima, one of the returnees, said most of the returnees are hopeful of returning back to South Africa because of their links and families there. “My business partner has a South African wife and a son who he left over there. He is planning to return when things calm down, and I will join him too”, he said.
The returnee, who is grateful to Air Peace for evacuating them free of charge, but not happy with government for not reacting the way most of them expected long ago, said that no matter the financial assistance and skills, South Africa offers more opportunities to young people, but the brutality of her people to others remains the biggest challenge.
“Abike Dabiri-Erewa said government will give us stipends to enable us get back to our respective states, but I am not waiting for anybody and will not collect the MTN pre-loaded Sim cards of N6, 000. All I need is to get home and plan again because there are few opportunities here and there are many of us jostling for what to do now”, he lamented.
Also, Ejuru thinks that government’s assistance will not go far in helping the returnees to settle down because the agencies handling the returnees’ skills acquisition programmes are Nigerians who also see opportunity to enrich themselves with the programme.
“It takes from N200,000 to set up a small skills shop, many will not complete the skills, many will abandon it on getting the money, some will complete, but government agencies will also take advantage of it to make money”, Ejuru said.
The majority of the populace lament over the job crisis in the country, which is driving graduates to accept offers that cannot put food on their tables. They think that government at all levels has not made enough efforts at creating jobs and that the returnees would definitely come with their own baggage including taking to crime to survive.
OBINNA EMELIKE
