Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has threatened to deport 600,000 illegal migrants, including Nigerians if he is re-elected.
The 81-year-old made the pledge while speaking during a TV interview, as he promised to remove those who ‘do not have the right to stay’.
According to UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, 19 percent of 157,000 migrants and refugees who have arrived Italy in 2016, were Nigerians. However, in 2014 there are 71,158 regular immigrants in Italy from Nigeria. In 2006 there were 37,733.
The three cities with the most number of Nigerians are Turin, Rome, and Padua. A report says, 30,000 Nigerian women are prostitutes in Italy.
During the first half of 2017, more than 12,000 Nigerians reached Italy through Libya. By the end of 2016, there had been 27,000, a 48 percent increase from the year before. Nigerians have been the most common nationality of central Mediterranean Sea arrivals now since the summer of 2011, a time known as the North African Emergency
Berlusconi said: ‘Immigration has become an urgent question because, after years with a leftwing government, there are 600,000 migrants who don’t have the right to stay.’ ‘Sic’
His threat comes after a far-right extremist; Luca Triani shot six Africans in Macerata, a small town in northern Italy, two of the victims, are Nigerians.
