By Oguwike Nwachuku
Earlier this year, the federal government confirmed that 16,387 Nigerians were deported from Libya, Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the world.
The Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Muhammad Babandede, disclosed this on January 5, 2018 while briefing reporters on the outcome of the findings by members of a government delegation to Libya.
The delegation went to Libya to get the facts about the large number of Nigerians in that country who have been turned into slaves.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, had the mandate of President Muhammadu Buhari to lead the delegation to secure their release.
Others on the trip included Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking Persons, Julie Okah-Donli; Director General of National Emergency Management Agency, Mustapha Maihaja; and Federal Commissioner for the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, Sadiya Umar-Farouk.
Babandede said out of the 16,387 Nigerian deportees, 5,908 were from Libya, 3,836 Saudi Arabia and 6,643 other countries.
“In 2017 alone we received 5,608 deportees, specifically from Libya. So if you add to the number we received on January 7, which was 485 from Libya, it will give you 6,393 deportees from Libya alone,” he explained.
According to him, between January 2017 and January 2018, 3,498 men, 2,684 female, and 211 minors were deported from Libya.
“I don’t want us to look at it as if it is only in Libya the deportees are coming from. We have deportees from Saudi Arabia. Surprisingly, we had a total of 3,836 deportees in 2017 alone.
“You know Europe has been deporting. The highest number of deportees came from South Africa, Italy and Austria.
“The total number we have from other countries is 6,643, which is greater than the total coming from Libya.
“So the grand total of persons deported to Nigeria in 2017 is 16,387. We are afraid this might continue or even be higher in 2018.”
Contrary to popular believe that Nigeria’s porous borders were majorly to blame for the migration craze, Babandede explained that people become illegal migrants because of greed and the urge to travel at all costs.
“There is greed for people to travel, we need to educate the people, we need to educate parents that Europe is not a paradise.”
The number of Nigerians who willfully submitted themselves to traffickers, prostitution cartels, and smuggling merchants in 2017 alone and the reality that the number must have doubled this year is important for us to appreciate the ranking of Lagos a few days ago by The Economist Intelligent Unit (EIU).
Lagos is believed to be the template for assessing other states in Nigeria as far as development is concerned but the ranking recently released cannot be said to be palatable.
In the report released on Tuesday, August 14, the EIU ranked Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, the third worst city in the world to live in out of a total 140 countries mirrored worldwide.
The city of Lagos was ranked 138th.
Syria’s war-torn capital, Damascus, continues to languish at the bottom of the list, with an overall score of 30.7 per cent, followed by Bangladesh’s Dhaka and Lagos.
Damascus and Dhaka are hotbeds of violence, destruction and war.
In 2017, Lagos was ranked the second worst city to live in after Damascus, meaning Lagos moved just one step ahead but still remained within the axis of cities that are a danger to humanity.
The indices for the ranking include stability, healthcare, culture, environment, education and infrastructure.
In the new ranking, the Australian capital, Melbourne, lost the title of world’s most livable city after a seven-year reign.
It dropped to second position by just 0.7 percent, behind Vienna in Austria, which received an overall score of 99.1 percent to overtake it.
The EIU assessors said Vienna’s rise to the top was attributed to increased security scores due to a return to relative stability across much of Europe after high-profile terrorist attacks in recent years.
The ranking showed that global livability has improved for the second year running, increasing from 74.8 per cent last year to 75.7 per cent in 2018.
Japan’s Osaka and Tokyo have moved into the top 10, coming in third and seventh place respectively. Both cities achieved their highest ranking on the survey this year, courtesy of decline in crime rates and improvements in public transportation.
“Osaka stands out especially, having climbed six positions, to third place, over the past six months, closing the gap with Melbourne.
“It is now separated from the former top-ranked city by a mere 0.7 of a percentage point.
“Osaka’s improvements in scores for quality and availability of public transportation, as well as a consistent decline in crime rates, have contributed to higher ratings in the infrastructure and stability categories respectively,” the report noted.
Hamburg and Helsinki, which held 10th and ninth place last year, have dropped out of the top 10, while this year’s ninth place spot went to Copenhagen, which achieved 96.8 per cent.
Canada, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver also performed relatively well.
The report said global business centres tend to be victims of their own success because the ‘big city’ buzz they enjoy could overstretch infrastructure and cause higher crime rates.
It noted that New York (57th), London (48th) and Paris (19th) are all prestigious hubs with numerous recreational activities but they all suffer from higher levels of crime, congestion and public transport problems.
Stability occasioned by improved security, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure are critical indices to measure how a city is ranked by the EIU assessors.
There is a nexus between the poor ranking of Lagos and the embarrassment the police, through the so-called Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), have been causing Lagosians in particular and Nigerians at large.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday, August 14 ordered that the squad be immediately and completely overhauled.
SARS is dreaded across the nooks and crannies of the country, not just because the personnel apply themselves properly to the ideals of those who designed it but because they have caused more problems than were meant to solve with the weapons at their disposal.
While many Nigerians talk with glee that SARS officers are armed robbers, others think they do worse things than many armed robbers have the capacity to do.
There is a convergence of opinion that SARS personnel are crude in their approach to work due to poor training and poor remuneration. They lack respect for the rule of law, human rights and dignity, and in most cases work at cross purposes with the police they represent.
It is therefore heart-warming hearing Osinbajo order the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to disband and overhaul the squad.
He also directed the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to set up a panel to probe allegations of rights abuses by the police unit.
Osinbajo’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, in a statement on Tuesday, August 14, said the directive was based on persistent public complaints against SARS.
Also, Osinbajo directed Idris to ensure that any unit that will arise from the ashes of SARS must be intelligence-driven and restricted to the detection and prevention of crime.
The statement said Osinbajo “has also directed the IGP to ensure that all operatives in the emerging unit conduct their operations in strict adherence to the rule of law and with due regard to International Human Rights Law and the constitutionally guaranteed rights of suspects.
“The operatives should also bear proper identification anytime they are on duty.
“In the meantime, the acting President has directed the National Human Rights Commission to set up a special panel that will conduct an investigation of the alleged unlawful activities of SARS in order to afford members of the general public the opportunity to present their grievances with a view to ensuring redress.”
I have enough experience in crime reporting to know that today’s SARS operations are not in tandem with the original concept.
Before now, it was difficult to know who SARS operatives were talk less of hearing that they lead suspects to banks and force them to withdraw money willy-nilly, even on trumped up charges.
Today, most SARS personnel are associated more with illegal duties such as mounting road blocks and engaging in other suspicious activities, than minding the routes through which the bad boys escape police arrest.
We hear of them generating fictitious petitions against innocent people they want to extort money from.
Many have complained of brutality by SARS operatives over what they are innocent about, that one wonders when then they have time to go after armed robbers for which the unit was set up.
It is these years of dereliction of duty, deviation from the norm and perception of SARS as a money making unit that have become the standard practice and causing several policemen to crave to work there.
Perhaps, if successive police chiefs had done the needful, completely overhauling the unit instead of the usual lip service reorganisation, the recent hashtag, #End SARS, would not have happened.
SARS has become a torn in the flesh of citizens. Its continuous existence with the current acronym is also a disservice to the police as an institution.
Because the unit generates good “revenue” for the institution, the police high command finds it difficult to overhaul it to suit contemporary policing or rein in the operatives for their own sanity.
The directive by Osinbajo is timely and should be seen to be implemented to the letter. And I am happy the NHRC is involved to ensure full compliance.
But the report that Idris has released what looks like a structure to deal with the excesses of SARS may not be in sync with what Presidency demands of the police.
He should consult widely before he comes up with a new structure and nomenclature for the overhauled SARS.
The arrangement where the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) in charge of Operations, the IGP X-Squad, the IGP Monitoring Unit, the Commissioner of Police, FSARS, the Force Public Complaints Bureau, the Public Complaint Rapid Respond Unit, among other structures have been itemised as the overhaul of SARS cannot be sustainable.
These structures, lame and uninspiring, have always been there and never helped to tame the rot in unit.
There is no difference between SARS and FSARS so to say. Let us find a new beginning for a truly reconstituted SARS with a name that will have nothing to do with the old unit.
I do not want to believe that Idris is about to disobey the Presidency again on a matter as critical as the directive to overhaul SARS if his failure to obey Buhari on Benue State assignment over trending criminality is anything to go by.
The directive is to overhaul SARS. FSARS as an alternative is not an overhaul. He should overhaul both the name and the operational dynamics of the old SARS as exemplified in the human capital that drive the unit which is where the key anomalies lie. If I were Idris, I will cause a clean sweep to be carried out in SARS whereby new blood will be injected in terms of operatives.
That said, Governor Akinwumi Ambode of Lagos State must be worried over the poor ranking Lagos got from the EIU.
He is bound to be worried, especially if he remembers the efforts his administration is making in security and infrastructure development.
That Lagos under Ambode is adjudged the fastest growing and the fifth largest economy in Africa is something that should call for celebration and the tempo sustained.
But Mr. Governor, do you really think the road infrastructure in Lagos is good enough to warrant a good grade from the EIU?
Despite the bus shelters springing up in different places in the city, the roads to bring the residents to the bus stops are not there. Most of them are in a very bad shape, and the EIU assessors use these roads too.
At times Lagosians wonder if the local governments and community development councils are still in place, and if anyone reminds them fixing feeder roads is part of their mandate.
Ambode, you do not need to embark on a trip of all the councils to have an idea of the level of performance of their chairmen and their team.
Just pay a surprise visit to Ogba, Ojodu, Ikeja, Oshodi, Alimosho, Surulere, Yaba, Ibeju Lekki, to mention a few places. You will understand why the idea of mega city for Lagos, though well conceived, is still a pipe dream.
What city will be qualified as mega when motorcycle (okada) riders are a threat to decent human and vehicular movement, and an environmental malady?
Mr. Governor, please find out if the Lagos State law on okada riding has not been breached irretrievably by both the government and the governed. Yet we crave for a mega city Lagos. How?
Efforts for a clean environment (including environmental pollution) can win laurels for the state government. But is that happening?
Noise and carbon monoxide pollution pose greater health hazards to Lagosians than even the way they dispose of wastes. One wonders if anybody checks the excesses of merchants of environmental pollution through noise making and emission of carbon monoxide around town.
Despite what is believed to have been done in the health sector in Lagos, general hospitals do not have basic facilities to diagnose patients.
It is either the beds are not enough to take patients or drugs are not available, and many more facilities taken for granted in countries where their cities are enviable.
Yes, education has remained one of the priorities of the Lagos State government, but it is still far between in terms of what should be competitive and make the state win award when juxtaposed with other countries.
When we think these things do not matter that is when they mean a lot to those mirroring us.
That is why I differ in the view of renowned financial expert and Chief Executive Officer, Financial Derivatives Company, Bismark Rewane, who described the ranking on Channels Television as subjective.
Rewane said: “First and foremost, I think the report is subjective and based on warped criteria. Certainly, in a survey that says that number 86 is Johannesburg when you talk about crime, terrorism, insurgency and Lagos is number 138 out of 140, it’s unfortunate.
“I feel safer in Lagos than in Johannesburg in terms of crime. I cannot stop at a traffic light in Johannesburg without looking over my shoulder; in Lagos I could probably do that.
“But having said that, to say that the risk of insurgency in Lagos – because I heard the interview and the guys talked about Boko Haram – quite frankly there is no Boko Haram existential threat in Lagos as anywhere.
“Lagos is safer from Boko Haram than say Yaoundé in Cameroon. So, I find it difficult to understand the criteria. Yes, there are other criteria but obviously to rank Lagos as the third worst city to live in in the world is a bit above the top.”
Does Rewane not know, for instance, that abuse of process like the negative reports that arose from #EndSARS# can rob-off on the assessment of Lagos?
Can impunity and de-emphasis on the rule of law win award for a city that craves renown in the comity of nations?
By the way, why should the focus of Lagos be Johannesburg or any of the violent prone cities across the globe? Definitely, there must be things or areas those countries’ cities are getting right which ours are not.
Ambode should rather take very seriously this ranking and see it as a wake-up call to do the needful for a state that delights in its city competing with the best of bests around the world.
That Lagos is mirrored together with 140 other countries should be celebrated, and it does not make sense to say the ranking is subjective because it did not favour you.
What if it had favoured you?
Nigerian leaders and Nigerians can do a lot to stop the mad rush of citizens to emigrate as we have seen from the number of those who traveled to Libya, Saudi Arabia and other countries in search of green pastures last year which has increased in 2018.
Imagine if Lagos ranking is the best out of the 140 nations under examination based on all the indices listed earlier. Will it attract investors? Will it boost the confidence of residents? Will that reflect in the ease of doing business by all and sundry? Will Lagos be a template for others to emulate? Will it reduce the number of emigrants out of Nigeria? Will the government of Lagos not be the envy of others?
If the answers are yes, then we have no choice than to work to be the best we can. And we can together make Lagos the mega city of our dream, and the best of the world’s choicest cities.
