180 NIGERIANS STRANDED IN LIBYA TO BE REPATRIATED MONDAY
“The UN Migration Agency’s next charter is set for Monday January 8, when around 180 Nigerian nationals are scheduled to be assisted under VHR to Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city and commercial hub. That flight will bring to close to 20,000 the number of migrants IOM has escorted home from Libya since the beginning of 2017’ the source said.
Penpushing also gathered that, IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has identified 432,574 migrants in Libya, mainly in the Tripoli, Misrata and Almargeb regions, and estimates the number of migrants to be between 700,000 and one million,”.
Similarly, the global migration agency said VHR was a programme that resulted in 19,370 stranded Third Country Nationals leaving primarily in the Tripoli area in 2017, while IOM said some 11,074 migrants had gone back to their home countries since it scaled up its efforts to facilitate the help for migrants interested in return assistance from Libya following the unrest in Sabratha in October.
“The top four countries of return in 2017 were: Nigeria, Gambia, Guinea Conakry and Mali with a charter to Nigeria on Dec. 29, 2017, marking the last VHR movement in 2017’,the source was quoted.
