More than two thousand one hundred and fourteen Nigerian returnees from Libya had been brought to the country from January till date.

Director-General, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Julie Okah-Donli said this while delivering a lecture on Youth Migration, Deportation and Rehabilitation: The Way Forward, under the theme: ‘Youth Migration, Consequences and Current Realities.’

Okah-Donli appealed to public spirited individuals and corporate bodies to assist government agencies to make the reintegration of the returnees easier.

She called for a holistic approach by the countries of origin and their destination counterparts in tackling the migration problems across the world.

According to her, Nigerian youths should not be desperate to leave the country at all cost, saying the criminal trafficking gangs were lurking all over the place to deceive the youths and eventually make them personal economic tools abroad.

Okah-Donli said there was need for government at all levels to come up with transformation programmes and a National Orientation and Reorientation programme that would change people’s attitude to migration.

In her words, without this, an attitude crisis would be another major driving force for illegal migration and something fundamental must be done to control and contain the illegal movement of people out of the countries.

Okah-Donli said a crucial step forward was to help to re-orient and re-educate the average Nigerian youth to make them realise that they could actualise their potentials and dreams at home, saying they should know that they were not poorer than their contemporaries abroad or in the country they want to migrate.

She advocated for direct foreign investments to open up the Nigerian economy, saying government should provide the tangible mass employment for the teeming youths and thereby discouraging unnecessary migration of Nigerians to other parts of the world in search of greener pastures.

The Director-General, also called for a National orientation and re-orientation programmes across the country to change the psyche of the Nigerian youth, who believe that they can only survive by leaving the country to other places.