On January 26, 2018 the Federal government deported 47 Cameroonian refugees and asylum seekers from Nigeria in utter breach of the obligation of the federal government under international law. As a sequel to the instructions of the deportees, our law firm challenged their deportation from Nigeria at the Abuja judicial division of the Federal High Court.
Incidentally, the first group of victims of the deportation are indigenes of Oyo state. They were removed from Lagosby the Lagos State Task Force and dumped at Molete in Ibadan. Hundreds of beggars and destitute from other western and northern states were subjected to degrading ejection from state. In criticising the urban renewal policy.
Apart from expelling beggars and destitute from urban centres in Nigeria the authorities of the federal capital territory and the 36 states of the federation have continued to demolish the so-called illegal structures inhabited by the poor. On a few occasions state governments have extended the discriminatory treatment meted out to poor people to civil servants. In 2014, the administration of former Governor Theodore Orji of Abia removed all non- indigenes from the civil service of the state.
As far as Lagos indigenes are concerned, other Yoruba people living in Lagos are “awon atounrinwa” or “ara ilu oke” . In the politics of exclusion played conveniently by the elite, the aliens from the other states in the southwest are no longer qualified to hold political posts in Lagos state. As a cosmopolitan state, Lagos cannot afford to subject any Nigerian citizen to discriminatory treatment.
The reactionary and opportunistic political class in the country is to blame for the dangerous trend; they invoke ethnic, religious and other primordial sentiments to divide the people of Nigeria. Since the dominant politics is devoid of ideology or principle, the members of the elite usually resort to the campaign of hate and prejudice to perpetuate their political and economic power. It is an old game of manipulation, which has impaired national integration a great deal.