Yoruba self-determination activist, Sunday Adeyemo, also known as Sunday Igboho, yesterday, raised the alarm over alleged killings and torture of some Nigerians in Egyptian prisons for various immigration offences.
He also urged President Bola Tinubu to quickly intervene in the situation to save the victims from dehumanising treatment they are being subjected to or even being killed before it is too late.
In a statement, Adeyemo said that credible information at his disposal indicated that a few of Nigerian nationals arrested by the Egyptian authorities have reportedly died because of long torture and brutal treatment from prison officials in the North Africa country.
The statement reads: “I have been receiving calls in the last two weeks from some of these detained Nigerians and their relatives over degrading and inhuman treatment they are facing without any intervention from the Nigerian Embassy in Cairo.
“I’m pleading with Tinubu, who is compassionate and has a listening ear, to come to the rescue of these helpless Nigerians. While I don’t condone any form of illegality, I feel pained and worried over their pathetic situation. But timely intervention of our President at this crucial time can still save the detainees from further suffering and imminent deaths.
Unfavourable economic condition in Nigeria, which became aggravated during the eight-year tenure of former President Muhammadu Buhari, further forced many Nigerians, who cannot afford to relocate to Europe and the United States of America, due to excruciating hardship to travel by roads to Egypt, Libya, Morocco and other African countries, in search of greener pastures.
“If successive governments at the federal level, before Tinubu’s presidency had created an enabling socio-economic atmosphere for individuals to explore their potentials and provided good governance, Nigerians in their thousands will not be leaving the country for uncertainty in foreign countries.
“In the same vein, contending issues of nepotism, inequalities among ethnic groups, political domination by a section of Nigeria, absence of true federalism and corruption, which somehow fuelled agitation for self-determination by some groups, will not have come up if our leaders had implemented policies to address these national challenges.”
