More than 200 Nigerian migrants stranded in Libya have been returned to their home country

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said that all Nigerians stranded in Libya and other parts of the world will be brought home and "rehabilitated," calling it appalling that "some Nigerians were being sold like goats for few dollars". German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the time for action had come. "It's very important that we simply support Africans to put a stop to illegal migration, so people don't have to either suffer in horrible camps in Libya or are even being traded."

More than 200 Nigerian migrants stranded in Libya have been returned to their home country, Nigerian officials said. The 242 migrants landed at Lagos airport on a Libyan Airlines flight at around 9:00 pm local time (3:00pm ET) on Tuesday. Among them were women carrying children and at least one man in a wheelchair. Nigerian authorities say they worked on returning the migrants from Libya in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Some of the 242 men and women who returned had been in Libyan detention camps while others willingly approached the Nigerian embassy in Libya to return home because of hardship there, authorities said. Meanwhile Former Barcelona, Chelsea and Inter Milan striker, Samuel Eto’o, has denied claims that he paid for flight tickets to help Cameroonian immigrants return home from Libya. Amid the slave trade crisis in the North African country, reports (such as this one) stated that Eto’o, who currently plays for Turkish club Antalyaspor, spent millions of dollars booking a plane for Cameroonians stuck in Libya. “Let us build our Africa,” Eto’o In a Facebook post, the 36-year-old striker refuted these reports, slamming them as an ‘absolutely unfounded’ rumor. He wrote, “Several sites have circulated a rumor that I would have given money to every migrant returnee, in relation to a topical issue. This rumor is absolutely unfounded! “I would therefore take advantage of this opportunity, dear brothers and sisters, to emphasize that love prevents more evils than money can solve.

“So, let’s not waste our precious time looking for thrills at the expense of grieving people, but let us use this time to prevent other brothers from being deprived of their dignity. “Let us not just react when we can prevent, because among these victims are certainly people who have been our neighbours at some point, but to whom we have not daigné to look kindly. “Let us build our Africa by having a positive impact on each other!”.