Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama has said that Germany is proposing a new process that will lead to smooth repatriation of 30,000 illegal Nigerian migrants.
Onyeama said this when he received the Security Adviser to the President of Germany, Dr Jan Hecker, and his team in Abuja.
The new proposal is predicated on perceived failures and slow pace of the current system of repatriation that involves both the participation of Nigerian embassies and consulate and the German immigration office.
“They don’t have enough faith and confidence in the process that we have at the moment for the repatriation process.
”Some of the delays they believed are with the Nigerian mission and consulate in Germany.
”They want to propose a completely new process of repatriation, known as Return and Re-admission,” he said.
Onyeama said that in the last two years only about 200 Nigerians had returned to the country out of about 30,000.
”Germans were not happy that the system we have in place at the moment is certainly not working to their satisfaction,” he said.
According to him, the new process essentially entailed that once all legal processes had been exhausted, Nigeria should trust them (Germany), to make right decision on who should be repatriated.
He added that once the decision was taken, Germany would bring the affected persons to Nigeria without the involvement of Nigerian mission in Germany.