Nigerian Amb Denies Report of 30,000 Nigerians in German Prisons

The Nigerian Ambassador to Germany,Yusuf Tuggar has denied news report credited to a civil society group that 30,000 Nigerians are languishing in German jails.

 

Reacting to the report ,Amb Tuggar described the report as false ,positing that only 121 Nigerians are in German prisons as against 3000 dished out by the NGO.

 

“There are no 30,000 Nigerians in prison or detention in Germany, there are only 121. So where this figure of 30,000 Nigerians being held in prisons to be deported is coming from, I don’t know.

 

“This story of 30,000 Nigerians to be deported from Germany is false. I know of no such discussions between the two countries. At any rate, there are no 30,000 illegal Nigerians in Germany, figure is much much lower than that”,the Ambassador noted.

 

The Ambassador recalled his recent interview with the Daily Trust,noting that “9,031 illegal Nigerians are in Germany with 121 in detention currently and 66 of them in the state of Bavaria, south of Germany.

 

“This is something we’re still investigating and that’s why we worked very hard gathering the data and its one of the reforms I instituted when I got there. On arriving in Germany, I realized not enough attention was being paid to data collation and interpretation, and you cannot plan or achieve anything without first of all having the data. It could be several reasons, one of which could be because it’s a border state and an entry point into Germany.

 

“It could also be that Buvaria is more stringent. But we’re still trying to get to the bottom of these issues, and whether these Nigerians actually committed the crimes or they’re being too hard on them. But without establishing the data, we couldn’t have done that. Even the figures that were being thrown around on the number of Nigerians in detention, we always felt they were contestable because its very easy for someone to say they’re Nigerian if they’re being threatened with deportation, because they would rather be deported to Nigeria than maybe another African country”,the Ambassador clarified.