The Federal Government has denied reports that some Nigerians deported from the United States were abandoned in Togo after being handed over by Ghanaian authorities.
It said the returnees were not stranded but were currently going through official profiling processes.
Reacting to the reports, the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) explained that the deportation exercise was being handled in line with international standards and that the affected Nigerians were under proper care.
NiDCOM’s Director of Media, Public Relations and Protocols, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, who spoke in an interview with Sunday PUNCH, clarified that the situation was being misrepresented.
“We are aware that some Nigerians were deported, but they are not stranded; they are being profiled because their own deportation is special, unlike others.
“Nigeria did not abandon them (deportees); there was a deal that Ghana agreed with the US to accept that responsibility to receive deportees from the US who are from the West African sub-region.
“After they got to Ghana, Ghana took their own, dispatched others through Togo, so I think they are going through profiling, not that they are stranded; they are still undergoing the process of profiling,” Balogun said.
His response followed a claim by one of the deportees, who alleged that the Ghanaian authorities had transferred him and other West Africans from a military base and left them stranded in Togo.
The man, who spoke to the BBC anonymously, claimed that he, two Togolese nationals, and one Liberian were moved under the guise of relocation to better accommodation but were instead abandoned.
“They did not take us through the main border; they took us through the back door. They paid the police there and dropped us in Togo,” he alleged.
According to him, they were left in Togo without documents and had since taken shelter in a hotel in Lomé, relying on support from relatives abroad.
The deportees, numbering 14, were said to be the first group sent out under former US President Donald Trump’s “third-country deportation” policy, which allows the US to send deportees to countries other than their own when their home nations refuse to accept them.
Ghana had reportedly signed an agreement with the US to receive such deportees from West Africa, with former President John Mahama confirming that his country had accepted 14 individuals under the deal.
