Skip to content

A special gift from UK to Nigeria: promoting human rights or secrecy?

At Lagos Airport, Nigerians deported from Britain are processed out of sight in a ‘reception centre’ given by Britain.

Published:
MURTALA.jpg
MURTALA.jpg

Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos

One July day the British High Commissioner to Nigeria met with the country’s minister of interior to express “delight” at a special gift from one friendly country to another.

The gift, hidden away behind a locked fence in the cargo section of Lagos’s Murtala Mohammed International Airport, is a newly built “reception centre” for processing people forcibly returned to Nigeria by the UK immigration authorities.