Immigration turns back Portuguese plane for illegal deportation

Barely a week after the Kenyan government was said to have deported three Nigerians without due process, leading to the grounding of the aircraft, a similar incident played out at the weekend when the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) at the Lagos Airport refused to accept one Isaiah Raymond Jnr. into the country.

Raymond was brought back from Lisbon, Portugal, but the NIS requested the officials of the Portuguese aircraft to return him to where he was coming from, follow the law on deportation of its nationals before he could be accepted into the country.

NIS top officials and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters yesterday that the flight crew complied with the directive almost immediately and returned Raymond to Lisbon.

The same scenario is playing out between Nairobi and Abuja following the deportation of three Nigerians -Oluwatosin Adebiyi, Chinedu Ifedigbo and Christopher Nalyelu, as Nigeria claimed that Nairobi flouted all known international laws and diplomacy in deporting its citizens.

The Kenyan government brought a legislative order from its Minister of Interior to deport foreign nationals. In international law, however, municipal law, which falls under the Kenya minister's purview, must be domesticated in another country before it can bind another country.