Nigerian soldiers fathered 250,000 kids in Liberia
From JAMES OJO, Abuja
Thursday, July 22, 2010



Nigerian soldiers who served in the ECOWAS monitoringgroup (ECOMOG) peace-keeping force during Liberia’s fatricidal war fathered over 250,000 children in that country.

Director-General of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa (DTCA), Dr. Sule Yakubu Bassi, who made the revelation to the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora, urged the lawmakers to prepare to visit Monrovia on the issue.

At an interactive session with the committee, led by Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa yesterday, Dr Bassi said over 250,000 children had been born to soldiers, who participated in the ECOMOG operations from Nigeria.

He stated that records showed that the oldest of the abandoned children was 16 years.
The ECOWAS Monitoring Group was formed by the regime of Ibrahim Babangida as the military president as an intervention force to restore peace in war-torn Liberia in 1990.
What was worrisome, according to him, was that majority of the children did not know their fathers, while their mothers had been making frantic efforts to locate the fathers of their children, most of whom had returned to Nigeria.



“The mothers are trying to make sure they (children) are properly documented as Nigerian Liberian and so on,” he said. The DTCA boss revealed that the Committee on Diaspora had agreed to undertake a visit to Liberia on a fact-finding mission, because the matter was outside the purview of the directorate.
“We deal with matters relating to people above 40 years, but I can tell you that our Embassy in Liberia is handling issues like this.

“Hon. Dabiri-Erewa is going to undertake a trip to Liberia to find out what is happening; how we can engage with them and the like, as a government; we can’t run away fromour people; they are our people; they are still young and they need schooling and they will also need to be nurtured just like every other Nigerians,” he said.
Apart from the abandoned children in Liberia, Bassi also told the committee that there were 17 million Nigerians in Diaspora.

He informed the House that the directorate had a data base capturing Nigerians, who are experts in various fields, adding that a consortium of Nigerian engineers were currently building a rail line in Baghdad, Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian community in Gabon has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to visit the country.
The request was made by the president of the community, Mr Babatunde Yekini, when he led a delegation to the Committee on Diaspora.

He stated that such a visit would improve the relationship between Gabon and Nigeria and also douse the tension building up over allegations that Nigerians were encouraging illegal immigrants.
Yekini told the committee that there were 10,860 legal immigrants and over 200,000 illegal immigrants registered with the community, adding that more illegal immigrants were entering Gabon through Nigerian waterways in Oron, Eket Ibino and James Town.

Mrs Dabiri-Erewa assured Nigerians in Gabon that the Federal Government would look into their requests and urged them to conduct themselves within the ambit of the law.
She asked them to take advantage of their numerical strength to further improve the relationship between Nigeria and Gabon.
She also assured the DTCA that the issue of children fathered by Nigerian soldiers would be looked into.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2010/july/22/national-07-22-2010-001.htm

double thread - double nonsense

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