By Robert A. Emmanuel
Antiguans and Barbudans will be able to view the full government report of the findings regarding the chartered flights from Nigeria as well as the government’s proposed solutions to the hundreds of West Africans stranded in the country.
Last month, Chief Immigration Officer Katrina Yearwood delivered a preliminary report on the matter to Attorney General Steadroy Benjamin and this was shared with his Cabinet colleagues.
However, during the post-Cabinet press briefing yesterday, Information Minister Melford Nicholas said that a more “thorough investigation needed to be done” prior to its release to the public.
“We were given certain leading pieces of information by Caribbean Impact [Impact Justice Project], and we will continue to work with our state agencies in other countries to ensure we have a full picture, after which we will take the necessary corrective action and share the information with the public,” he said.
The government has been under pressure to provide a final solution for the hundreds of West Africans who have been stranded in the country since January after chartered flights from Nigeria were reported to have transported them here.
Many of those visitors were later revealed to be seeking refuge from conflict in Cameroon.
The United Progressive Party (UPP), the country’s main opposition party, has been calling for a public inquiry into Antigua Airways and subsequent chartered flights that brought the West African people to the twin island nation.
Last week, the government said it was watching a High Court case in Trinidad and Tobago where five Africans – who some believed had travelled to Antigua on one of the chartered flights — have been fighting extradition.
The Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister, Lionel Hurst, said that the Africans in the Trinidad case had arrived in that country “long before” the first Africans arrived in Antigua and Barbuda.
According to Trinidadian newspapers, the African asylum seekers arrived in Trinidad on a flight from Suriname in November 2022.
Last month, Observer media reported that two Africans were arrested here on suspicion of fraud, and Minister Nicholas revealed that immigration officials found four instances of fraudulent conversion from “one West African country to another”.
“The Border Management System was able to help immigration officials to see repetitive use of a particular passport number and when they did their further investigation, they would have stumbled upon the fraudulent conversion,” Nicholas said.
He also indicated that the outcome of further investigation into these cases may impact the final decision on the Africans.
Nicholas also revealed that he and a technical team will travel to Canada to expand the Border Management System used to identify fraud.
“We are seeking to augment the services on that Border Management System and, later this month or early next month, both myself and a technical team will journey to Ottawa to deal with the supplier,” he added.