A total of 826 Nigerians stranded in Libya, en route Europe, voluntarily returned from the North African country in October. The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has announced.
The Director General of NEMA, Mustapha Maihajja, said this while receiving a fresh batch of 270 Nigerians who arrived the country on Tuesday.
Maihajja, represented by the South West Zonal Coordinator of the agency, Suleiman Yakubu, said the returnees were assisted back to Nigeria by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the European Union.
He said the fresh batch added to 138 Nigerians earlier brought back on October 3; 257 on October 24 and 161 on October 26, resulting in 826 returnees in October alone.
Maihajja urged the returnees to contribute their quota to national development, stressing that the quest to build Nigeria required the support of all and sundry.
The Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, at 7.30pm aboard a Libyan Airline aircraft with registration number 5A-LAU.
They comprised 216 female adults, 13 teenage girls and five infants; while the male adults were 27, comprising 18 teenagers and nine babies.
Other agencies that received the returnees were the Nigerian Immigration Service, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and the Police.
