Nigerian students E.K.C and A.U.A. who were deported by Croatian police to Bosnia, treating them as illegal migrants, have returned home to Nigeria, Bosnia's Foreigners' Affairs Service said Friday.
“They legally resided in the Republic of Croatia when they illegally entered the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this regard, the Foreigners’ Affairs Service took all the necessary measures and actions and imposed a measure of their expulsion and surveillance at the Immigration Center,” the Service said. “As Nigerians expressed their desire to return to their country of origin, the Foreigners Service contacted the competent Nigerian Embassy in Budapest, which expressed readiness to fund the return of their nationals to their home country.”
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Since it was in their best interest, the students, who wilfully agreed to be returned to Nigeria, have left the country, they said.
Earlier this month, Bosnian and Croatian media outlets wrote about two students from the Federal University of Technology Owerri who arrived in Zagreb from Nigeria on November 12 to participate in the World InterUniversities Championships in Pula. After competing in a table tennis tournament, they left for Zagreb where, on November 18, they were to have flown to Lagos via Istanbul.
The students told Zurnal media outlet that having returned to Zagreb they went to a hostel and then took a walk. Exiting a tram, they were stopped by police, who apprehended them because they did not have identification documents, which they had left in the hostel.
Officers then, allegedly, put them in a van and told them they were taking them to Bosnia. As it turned out, they took them to the border where, together with several other persons, probably illegal migrants, they chased them away to Bosnia.
