By Christel Odili
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama has said that Nigeria is ready to work closely with the Netherlands
in tackling the rising incidence of Irregular illegal migration and human trafficking in the country.
Both countries announced the decision after a meeting between the Nigeria Minister of Foreign Affairs and his Netherland counter path, Stef Bloc in Abuja.
Onyeama noted the government is working stronger to ensure more effective border control and measures are being put in place to checkmate the situation.
According to him, “the economy is a push factor and we are working strenuously to address the economic challenges we face, we have an economy recovery and growth plan, that we believe will really set the country on a sustainable economic growth path and we are hoping to see a reduction in irregular migration as a result”.
while elaborating possible ways of curbing the menace of migration he stated that, “Economic recovery and growth plan would help in solving the issue of irregular migration, it is about building plans, it is about government policies being put in place and to ensure the ease of doing business and microeconomics. we have come out of recession already and economic growth is visible, so we are already succeeding on the path of advocacy”.
“Of course, we have the regular migration and we have also the human trafficking and very often this are exploiting the vulnerable and those whose level of awareness is pretty low, so we have to do a lot of sensitization and advocacy in that area”, he cited education as another element and sensitization.
“with regards to broader measures that involves technology and we are deploying a lot of technology in that context and we are re targeting human trafficking and we are arresting large numbers of human traffickers.
The Netherlands Minister, Stef Bloc disclosed that Netherlands will assist Nigeria in its repatriation of its citizens from Libya and other countries.
He further disclosed that, with regards to those people who leave the countries, Netherlands have taken the lead within the united nations in sanctions targeted at Libyan criminals involved in human trafficking and illegal man abuse.
“We would cooperate very closely in repatriating those people that do go to Netherlands, who are not entitled to residency and has Nigerian nationality, so i think the cooperation between Nigeria and Netherlands in the issue of migration is a very good example of bilateral cooperation”, he opined.