Over 1,000 Stranded Nigerians Return from Niger Republic in Single Batch

No fewer than 1,100 Nigerian migrants have arrived in Kano from Agadez in Niger Republic by road, the Nigeria Immigration Service announced on Friday.

Personnel from multiple federal and state agencies are on ground to process, counsel and facilitate the returnees’ reintegration with their families, according to the Commandant of the Immigration Training School in Kano, Anthony Akuneme.

The returnees are being documented through a migration data system at the Migrants Arrival, Knowledge and Information Area before proceeding to a transit centre for final profiling, psychosocial counselling and reintegration support.

The processing corridor, which includes the Kano Nationality Sortation Centre and other facilities, is jointly operated by the Immigration Service, the anti-trafficking agency, international migration organisations and state government counterparts.

Friday’s arrival follows a pattern of assisted and spontaneous returns from Agadez, a city in northern Niger that has for decades served as the primary waypoint for West African migrants attempting the overland route to Libya and onwards across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Agadez was once one of the world’s most critical migration hubs, with hundreds of thousands of migrants passing through annually at the peak of the West Africa-to-Europe movement between 2015 and 2018.

However, Niger enacted anti-smuggling legislation under international pressure, which dramatically reduced formal transit flows. Despite the crackdown, irregular migration through the Agadez corridor has reportedly never fully ceased.

The military coup of July 2023, which ousted the then president and led to the withdrawal of foreign forces, has since destabilised the security architecture that supported migration management in the Sahel, leading to renewed movement along the corridor.

Nigerians make up one of the largest nationality groups among returnees from the Agadez corridor. Thousands of stranded Nigerians have been brought back through voluntary humanitarian returns since 2017, with the majority being young men from northern states who had intended to reach Europe but became trapped in Niger due to lack of funds, detention or the collapse of smuggling networks.