Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, says the transfer of the Sentenced Persons Agreement with Ethiopia to repatriate incarcerated Nigerians is in line with the country’s citizen diplomacy framework.

According to her, it reflects the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu.

Ms Odumegwu-Ojukwu said this in a statement on Thursday. She said the important diplomatic milestone, which placed priority on the Nigerian diaspora, was an effort to intervene in the cases of Nigerians imperilled in other parts of the world.

She explained that some of the crimes attributed to the inmates are “wild tangents”, saying the government was determined to bring the inmates home to serve their sentences with dignity and without exposing them to inhuman conditions.

According to Ms Odumegwu-Ojukwu, efforts had been made for many years to get the prisoners back home to Nigeria, amid difficulties in getting the actual numbers of the inmates in Ethiopia.

The minister mentioned that the inmates were spread across Kaliti and Aba Samuel, both maximum-security prisons, and stressed the need to sign the agreement for the transfer of convicted criminals.

“Essentially, if prisoners have been sentenced in one country and they are serving a jail term in that country, they can return to their state or country of origin to serve out the sentence.

“This is important because the inmates in those prisons have been agitating for so many years to return to Nigeria to complete their jail terms.

“This is in view of their precarious living conditions, health challenges, inadequate medical facilities, poor feeding, and denial of visitation rights. They didn’t have adequate legal services, and there was a language barrier, among other things,” Ms Odumegwu-Ojukwu stated.

She reiterated that four Nigerian prisoners had died in the space of time it took for both countries to finalise the agreement.

“Some of these young people that I saw when I went into that prison could have been anybody’s brother,” added Ms Odumegwu-Ojukwu. “So, should they be faced with such a precarious situation for one mistake?”

Ms Odumegwu-Ojukwu pointed out that one of the provisions of the memorandum of understanding between the two countries was the undertaking not to grant a pardon or amnesty to the convict requested for transfer without the consent of the sentencing state.

(NAN)