Xenophobia: Bishop urges FG to reintegrate South Africa returnees

Archbishop of Niger Delta Province, Anglican Communion, Tunde Adeleye, has said that Nigerian returnees from South Africa may spell doom for the country if they are not properly reintegrated into the society. 

Adeleye, who spoke during an interactive session with newsmen in his office in Calabar, yesterday said bringing Nigerians back from South Africa without looking for ways to effectively reintegrate them into the Nigerian society might be detrimental to the already fragile socio-economic condition of the nation.

He called on the Federal Government to make the country better for the people, adding that many Nigerians who fell victim to xenophobic attacks in South Africa left Nigeria in search of greener pastures.

His words: “People are leaving the country because they are not getting what they need to succeed and from what we gathered from the authorities in South Africa, they have not shown any sign of trying to sanitise their country. They just want other nationals to leave.

“We need to make our country better so that people will decide to stay here and help in the building of Nigeria. The government needs to provide jobs, houses and give Nigerians a future. Seventy per cent of Nigerians has no future. The political class has taken all such that there is nothing again for the youths.

“If the returnees look around and cannot find anything tangible to hold on to, the next thing is for them to start planning to leave the country again. Those who claim that Nigeria did the same thing in the 1980s by sending Ghanaians back to their country are wrong because the reasons are different. The Ghanaians were not killed and many of them who entered the country legally are still here.”