President John Dramani Mahama has taken steps to allay concerns among Nigerians living in Ghana and their government by promising a special envoy sent by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that mass deportations will not occur.
Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, paid President Mahama a courtesy call and emphasized the two nations’ shared history and interdependence while reassuring him that Ghana has no plans to use mass expulsions.
Reiterating Ghana’s adherence to ECOWAS procedures, he dismissed Nigerian concerns about a possible mass exodus of its residents from Ghana after a video went viral.
Minister Odumegwu-Ojukwu expressed the “anxieties” of the Nigerian government and people by bringing up the viral video, the general fear of mass deportations, and the possibility of burning Nigerian traders’ stores.
Nigeria’s National Assembly has held emergency sessions as a result of the worries, she said, and traditional leaders have told Ghanaian relatives to go back home.
Ghana and Nigeria have a long history together, and President Mahama recognized this by calling them “siblings of the same parents, and so our destinies are joined together.”
“I think that that is a part of our past, and it’s an unfortunate past that we want to put behind us, and I believe that neither of our two countries should mass deport our citizens ever again,” he said, citing previous regrettable instances of mass deportations in both countries, Nigeria in the 1980s and Ghana in the 1960s.
“We are members of the ECOWAS, and we have the ECOWAS protocol that allows our citizens to travel freely between our countries.”
He also made it clear that, notwithstanding a few isolated occurrences and illegal action by a few individuals, these situations are handled through the appropriate legal processes rather than by mass deportation or collective punishment.
He declared that foreign nationals living in Ghana who commit crimes will face personal responsibility and punishment.
The latest tensions, according to President Mahama, were caused by the reemergence of a 2013 video that showed an “Igbo king” talking about acquiring territory for a kingdom. This video was mistakenly believed to be a new development.
He dismissed this as “a bit of a storm in a teacup,” telling the Nigerian delegation that such external claims are impossible because Ghanaian law oversees the establishment of traditional councils.
President Mahama was praised by Minister Odumegwu-Ojukwu for defusing a potentially explosive scenario, pointing out that the original concerns about widespread violence upon their arrival in Accra were not justified.
Source: newsthemegh.com