Niger Republic, respect ECOWAS protocol

Immigration authorities in Niger Republic recently arrested, detained and consequently deported the deputy editor of Daily Trust on Sunday, Lawan Danjuma Adamu, who had traveled on official business to Agadez town, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. He was there to investigate how the town serves as a staging post for thousands of youths […]

Immigration authorities in Niger Republic recently arrested, detained and consequently deported the deputy editor of Daily Trust on Sunday, Lawan Danjuma Adamu, who had traveled on official business to Agadez town, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. He was there to investigate how the town serves as a staging post for thousands of youths from Nigeria and other West African countries that make the perilous journey across the desert to Libya and then on to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.
Before setting out for the trip, Adamu went to the Nigerien Embassy’s Kano Consulate for travel permission. His letter of application was stamped by a consulate official and he then embarked on the journey to Agadez. He used this document to make it through the Nigeria/Niger border post at Kongolom in Katsina State. The same paper enabled him to make it through numerous immigration checkpoints before finally arriving at Agadez after many hours’ bumpy travel on a very dusty road. At the final check point just outside Agadez, Adamu’s traveling document was questioned by immigration officers.
They told him that his traveling document was not genuine. The editor explained that he obtained the stamped document from their Consulate office in Kano and wondered how the document could have been counterfeit. Adamu, who is an experienced cross-border traveler, pleaded with the immigration officers to verify his claim with the Consulate office in Kano. His pleas however fell on deaf ears. He was arrested and detained by the immigration officers, who took him to their office in Agadez.
During his detention, our editor was put in a cell together with a mentally ill man. He was also made to pay for all the meals he took while in detention. This means he would have been left to starve for the entire period of his detention if he hadn’t enough money on him. It was only after loud protests by the Media Trust management and howls of protest by his professional colleagues on the social media that the Niger Republic authorities relented from their cruel plan. The officers told Adamu he would be taken back to Zinder where the authorities concerned could decide whether to deport him to the Nigeria/Niger border or validate his traveling papers. They then bundled him into a crowded bus and took him back to Zinder and on to the Nigerian border.
Adamu’s detention was a clear case of infringement of the right to freedom of movement as an Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) citizen and his ill-treatment also amounted to abuse of fundamental human rights. Furthermore, his arrest and detention was a flagrant violation of the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of persons, residence and establishment. The protocol which was adopted on May 29, 1979 provides in paragraph 2 of Article 27 of the Treaty of ECOWAS for member states to “exempt Community citizens from holding visitor’s visa and residence permits and allow them to work and undertake commercial and industrial activities within their territories.” Article 2 under the general principles on movement of persons, residence and establishment provides that “Community citizens have the right to enter, reside and establish in the territory of member states.”
Since Niger Republic is a signatory to the protocol that guarantees freedom of movement of citizens of ECOWAS member states, it is ridiculous that the same country will defy the protocol in this flagrant manner. If Adamu was extradited back to Nigeria because his traveling document was stamped but which unknown to him was not signed, the onus is on the Nigerien authorities to contact the source where the document was issued and not to hold Lawan Danjuma responsible for the lapses of their Consulate office in Kano.
While we urge the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take this matter up with the Nigerien envoy in the country, we call on Niger Republic to apologise to Nigeria, to Media Trust Limited and to Lawan Danjuma Adamu. It should also undertake to show more respect for ECOWAS protocols and the rights of human beings in the future.