Nigerians have been advised to travel outside the country with proper legal documents. Disclosing this recently was Professor John Lekan Oyefara of the Department of Sociology, University of Lagos.
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He spoke on the topic: “Irregular Migration, Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery: Challenges of the Re-Integration of Deportees and Returnees in Nigeria”, during the first Quarter Seminar of the University of Lagos, Faculty of Social Sciences.

Oyefare, who was the Principal Investigator (PI) of a study on the topic, spoke along with members of his team: Dr. Pius Adejoh, Prof. Chinwe Nwanna and Dr. Bamidele Alabi.

According to him, the concept of irregular migration borders on legality.

“Before going to a country, you should be able to have all the necessary documents, but if you don’t have those papers, it means that you are there illegally.

“When you are in a country that is not the country of your origin and you do not have the papers as at the time you are there, it means that you are irregular”.
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The word irregular means that you are an illegal migrant. You move there without the necessary papers,” he said.

According to him, thousands of Nigerians are travelling outside the country because the economic situation in the country is not conducive.

“So, we need to do more to make sure that we do what is appropriate. If Nigerians are comfortable, there will not be any tendency for them to want to leave the country, because there is no place like home.

“I am not saying that people should not travel. Travelling is part of development. We should travel legally. People travel to acquire knowledge, and they transfer them back to Nigeria. Travelling is good but when you want to travel, let it be legal, with the proper documentation,” he advised.

The study, he said, has been able to uncover some of the issues, such as the motivation for travels, the challenges migrants face as well as the trauma of deportation.

Those are the core issues that we are trying to study. In addition, what is the government doing about them?

“We see the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) receiving deportees, but we have to strengthen the methods we use, because harvesting them and dumping them afterwards is not too good. We have to follow up. Many of them are going through so many challenges in terms of how to start off again.

“That is what I think the government should look into and see what it can do to be able to address the issues, so as to reduce the tendency for those deported trying to go back,” he stated.
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