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Libya begins mass arrest of Nigerians after AFCON qualifier verdict

Published

2 years ago

November 3, 2024

Advocate News Nigeria

•Libya Policemen

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Following the verdict delivered by the Confederation of African Football in response to the complaint lodged by the Nigeria Football Federation over the recent inhumane treatment meted out to the Super Eagles in Libya, members of the Nigerian community have reported mass arrests and fines in the country.

The Nigerian football team was held at the Al-Abraq Airport in eastern Libya for over 20 hours upon arrival for the second leg of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between the Super Eagles and Libya’s national team.

The contingent was scheduled to land at the Benghazi Airport and travel for nearly four hours by road to Benina, where the match was to be played.

However, less than an hour before landing, the Tunisian pilot reportedly received a directive from Libyan authorities to divert the flight to the Al-Abraq Airport, located 150 miles away from the destination.

The development sparked widespread outrage, forcing the NFF to withdraw the Super Eagles from the qualifying match and file an official complaint to CAF.

In its ruling on Saturday, October 26, signed by its Chairman, Ousmane Kane, the disciplinary committee of the African football body awarded the Super Eagles of Nigeria three points and three goals for the abandoned match.

The disciplinary board ruled that the Libyan Football Federation breached Article 31 of the Africa Cup of Nations Regulations and Articles 82 and 151 of the CAF Disciplinary Code.

The panel also ordered the LFF to pay a fine of $50,000 within 60 days of the notification of the decision.

Displeased with the verdict, the LFF President Nasser Al-Suwai’I described it as “unjust and malicious,” alleging that the NFF’s influence within CAF played a major role in the outcome.

A report on Monday by a Libyan outlet, Libyan Observer, quoted Al-Suwai’I saying the LFF would file an official appeal within hours and that if the appeal was denied, the body would resort to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to ensure “their legitimate rights are secured.”

Following the CAF ruling, a popular Libyan news blog, Libya News Today 1, posted on Sunday, stating, “All Libyan TV channels are urging the government to arrest the Nigerian workers who are working here in Libya without legal papers. They have to pay $500 plus taxes.

“The fine that Libya is accused of will be paid by Nigerian citizens who live in Libya. We have been subjected to injustice. We have no borders with Nigeria. What benefit are they to us? They’re a burden on the Libyan people. They have to go back home.”

The blog has more than 188,000 followers on Facebook and 57,000 likes.

The post was accompanied by a video of a Libyan TV presenter, who said, “Anyone who is living in Libya and working without paying tax is eating haram, which means sinful money. The government should make every effort to arrest all Nigerians who are working in Libya so that they can pay a tax of $500 and regulate their stay in the country by obtaining residence permits.”

Another Libyan site, Libya INF.TV, reported that Libyan stations wanted the government to start arresting Nigerian workers.

“Those who don’t have Libyan papers will have to pay a fine of $500 for taxes. If you refuse deportation, no mercy. The Libyan government will pay the Nigerian government from their citizens’ money,” the post said.

Speaking with Punch, a Nigerian living in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, Adenaike Emmanuel, said the arrests began on Sunday after the CAF statement was released in the country.

“They have already started. The news came out on Saturday, and they were saying they can’t accept it and that they are not the ones who will pay the money. They have started proving this.

“Someone called me and said they had already begun arresting people in his area. The same thing is happening here in Tripoli. In some places, people were arrested on Sunday morning and afternoon. As I mentioned before, Libyans don’t hide their feelings. They believe that by doing this, they are getting their revenge,” Adenaike stated.

The President of the Nigerian community in Libya, Peter Omoregbie, also confirmed the arrests in a video shared by multiple Libya-based Nigerian blogs during the week.

Omoregbie, who confirmed this while making an official report at the Libyan immigration office on Monday, said, “The arrests started on Sunday night in some areas in Tedora. They are arresting innocent people. They don’t even care whether you have passports or residence permits. They just don’t care, which doesn’t happen in other countries.”

When asked to provide background to the incident, he said, “The football body is an association on its own, which the government isn’t supposed to interfere with according to CAF laws. There was a football match scheduled between Nigeria and Libya on October 15. Nigeria was supposed to arrive in Benghazi, but they were diverted to another state, so the match could not take place. The Nigerian football team then returned home. Since then, CAF has investigated the issue and set up a committee to find out what really happened.

“Yesterday, the verdict was issued that Libya has to pay a fine of $50,000 to CAF due to the way they treated the Nigerian football team. Now, on social media, Libyan journalists and numerous bloggers are saying that Nigeria will be made to pay the $50,000 fine by arresting all Nigerians in Libya. But in other countries, nothing like that happens.

“As the community leader, I received some videos showing that the arrests started last night in the Tedora area. They said the Libyan police have started arresting Nigerians, whether they have passports or not. Some of us are already afraid, calling everywhere to ask what to do. Sometimes, as community leaders, we are helpless. Even the Nigerian Embassy’s hands are sometimes tied. But international bodies need to intervene in this situation.”

Two days after Omoregbie’s report, another Nigerian in the country, Omo Oba Legba, said the arrests had intensified.

In a Facebook video posted on Wednesday, he said, “My Arab master, who is a policeman, just called me now and told me not to go out to buy anything because they have started arresting Nigerians in Libya. I asked him, ‘What about those with Libyan passports?’ But he said they aren’t considering passports and that anyone who is Nigerian will be arrested. That’s why I decided to alert our people so they know how far this issue has gone.

“The Super Eagles had what they needed to and returned. They got their money, whether they won or not. But see the problem they’ve caused for us. If Nigeria was good, we wouldn’t have come to Libya to suffer. The Nigerian team only faced a day of hardship—what about other Nigerians here who face the same treatment every day? My Arab told me that until the CAF fine is overturned, they won’t stop arresting Nigerians. Please, we appeal to the Nigerian government to come to our aid.”

Similarly, Libya INF.TV posted a video on Thursday where a Nigerian pleaded with the Libyan police to stop the indiscriminate arrests.

He said, “Football has nothing to do with us. If you want to catch them, catch them when they come here. Leave us out of this. And to the Nigerian team, I don’t know what you’re thinking, coming here to play football with the Libyan people. You don’t have sense. Please, Libyan police, please.”

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the National Institution for Human Rights in Libya, Ahmed Hamza, has warned against retaliatory acts targeting Nigerian workers in the country in the aftermath of the CAF ruling.

According to Libya Review, Hamza noted that some media platforms were inciting hostility towards foreigners by portraying them as illegal or irregular residents.

“We warn against any form of retaliation against foreign and migrant workers in Libya, especially Nigerian workers, by security forces, armed groups, or citizens,” Hamza stated.

He cautioned that unlawful actions against foreigners could lead to repercussions in domestic and even international justice.

When Punch contacted the Libyan Embassy in Abuja for comments, a lady who identified herself simply as Rose said she was not authorised to talk.

She said, “As you can see, I am not the media secretary. Whatever information you need, kindly put it into writing and send it to the embassy. Then, they will respond to it. Address the letter to the ambassador of the Libyan embassy.”

Our correspondent wrote a letter of inquiry to the embassy as requested. However, 48 hours later, there was no response.

A request for information from the Nigerian Embassy in Tripoli was also not replied to as of press time.

When contacted, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eche Abu-Obe, simply said, “I have sent a message to the Director Africa.”

The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission had yet to respond to calls and a text message from the publication as of the time of filing this report.

A former Nigerian ambassador to Mexico, Ogbole Amedu-Ode, said the Federal Government should investigate the retaliatory arrests and report Libya to the African Union.

He said, “The Nigerian government doesn’t have hardcore evidence, and if they do, they should report Libya to the African Union. If Nigerians collate evidence of the maltreatment, the Federal Government can protest directly to the Libyan government over what Nigerians are facing.”

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Despite fuel subsidy removal, FG struggles to implement budgets, experts lament

Published

4 hours ago

August 31, 2026

Advocate News Nigeria

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• Say capital projects development under threat

Economic experts have lamented that despite fuel subsidy removal in 2023, the Federal government struggled to implement 2024 budget with the 2025 budget recording barely 30 percent implementation.

They said the continued delay in the implementation of rollover and the current budget by the government posed a threat to capital projects.

Speaking at the weekend with the Nigerian Tribune, an economic expert, Eze Onyekpere, explained that under the current expenditure, “you have salaries and embodiments of public officers. So the only people you can touch are those people who are working with government, which is very few.

“Another part of recurrent expenditure is debt, which is taking 53 percent of all our revenue. So, those ones are not impacting on anybody. Now, the part of the budget that touch lives of the people is the capital budget, particularly the developmental capital” he stated.

Onyekpere said the developmental capital deals with building bridges, hospitals, schools, water facilities, improving electricity and agriculture.

“So, if you are not implementing capital projects that mean you are only running the bureaucracy, paying salaries, paying debts. You are not doing projects that will impact the life of the original people.”

He explained, ‘Don’t forget that it is from capital budget that you also buy bullets, buy arms, which after paying salaries of the soldiers and the military and the police, they also need equipment to be able to work. So if you are not funding that, there is no way they will be performing optimally.

“So that is the danger of not implementing the capital budget. We are being told that the resources are improving, that the money is there. So why is the government not implementing the budget if the money is there?” He questioned.

The Economic Expert further explained that part of the Ease of Doing Business is building the road that transport the goods, or that there are good railways, or that we are having constant 24-hour electricity instead of factories having to run a generator or start producing their own mini grids to power production, causing commodity price increase.

It is reported that only 30 percent of the 2025 capital budget was funded and executed during its initial cycle due to revenue shortfalls. 70 percent of the unexecuted 2025 capital projects were deferred and rolled over into the 2026 capital budget framework.

Also lamenting the non-implementation of the country’s budget, another Economic Expert and the Co-founder of BudgIT, Oluseun Onigbinde, said the current administration has declared more revenue with low capital releases.

“You don’t need to continue to roll the budget over and over. There are so many items you find in the budget that have no priority; they don’t make any developmental sense to the Nigerian people. For example, you are putting palaces in the budget.

“The Federal Government trying to build palaces, or investing in churches and mosques, or buying musical instruments for a church is not going to bring any developmental opportunity. So there are multiple layers of these issues, and there is no coordinated fiscal program from the federal government.

“The federal government is raising revenues, but there are challenges. One is the issue of debt servicing cost. Because of the devaluation of the currency, debt servicing cost has skyrocketed. It’s around 17 trillion naira as of last year.”

He warned that debt servicing cost is not slowing down any time soon. So the federal government needs to reflect on its fiscal choices and ask itself, how do I generate more revenue? That is the first point.

The second point you have to ask is, how do I prioritise capital spending that gives us impact? And that starts from the budgeting process» he stated.

During the Senate engagement with the Ministry of Finance recently, Senator Mohammed Tahir Monguno raised the alarm.

He questioned why capital projects and critical government programs appear to be lagging if revenue collections are exceeding projection.

The senator also expressed concern over the reported absence of capital releases to security agencies and sought clarification on the retention of about 1.7 trillion naira from recent federation account allocations.

“We have exceeded the target of our revenue collection. It is inherently contradictory for government to woefully fail to implement the budget. Where are these revenues going to? If the budget, for example, 2025 budget, has not been implemented, and we have to roll over 70 percent of 2025 to 2026, and that with the promise that 30 percent will be implemented before March.

«Up to March, even 30 percent was not implemented. National Assembly had to extend the lifespan of the budget up to September to allow government to implement just 30 percent component of 2025 budget”, he lamented.

In response, the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele said for external loans, “we always need the approval of the National Assembly.

“So, what happens is, when we get the approval of the National Assembly, the media would rightly report it, and many people take that as money borrowed. When we now borrow the money, they report it again. So, in fact, I think it was last year when the National Assembly approved about $20 billion, which was based on MTEF. So people add up big numbers as the money we have borrowed, and that is misleading in terms of the analysis.

“We are currently finalising this breakdown in the Ministry of Finance. We’ll make it available to the public. It will show how much the National Assembly approved and how much of what we have borrowed and how it has been spent” he stated.

Analysts believe that the low budgetary implementation, particularly the capital project aspect, has denied many citizens the benefits of the fuel subsidy removal as only a few who has direct business to do with the government that may have gained from the policy. (Nigerian Tribune)

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‘Nigeria is burning’ — Atiku tackles Tinubu over three-week European vacation

Published

5 hours ago

August 31, 2026

Advocate News Nigeria

Atiku and Tinubu

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Former Vice-President and 2027 presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s decision to embark on a three-week vacation in Europe amid the country’s economic and security challenges.

Atiku, in a statement issued after Tinubu’s departure, said the President’s absence from the country at a time of widespread hardship reflected what he described as a “disturbing vacuum of political leadership”.

He acknowledged that there was no constitutional vacuum, but argued that the circumstances surrounding the President’s trip raised questions about his leadership priorities.

“Nigeria may not be facing a constitutional vacuum today, but there is a disturbing vacuum of political leadership,” Atiku said.

The former vice-president contrasted Tinubu’s trip with his own travels, noting that the responsibilities of a sitting president were different from those of a private citizen.

“I have travelled, lived and spent time abroad, and I have never pretended otherwise. But there is a fundamental difference between the travels of a private citizen and the responsibility of the sitting President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said.

Atiku listed rising living costs, food insecurity, high transport fares and insecurity among the challenges confronting Nigerians, arguing that the situation required the President’s presence in the country.

“Consider what Bola Tinubu is leaving behind. Petrol priced beyond the reach of ordinary people. Families rationing food. Transport fares that have turned a journey to one’s own village into a luxury. Insecurity that buries Nigerians week after week,” he said.

He also noted that Vice-President Kashim Shettima was out of the country on official duty, describing the President’s decision to travel under the circumstances as difficult to understand.

According to Atiku, leadership requires knowing when a country needs the physical presence of its leader.

“Leadership is not merely the constitutional right to occupy an office; it is the judgment to know when your country needs you at home,” he said.

Using a fire analogy, Atiku argued that a leader should remain with his people during a crisis rather than leave the country.

“A father may travel when all is well. But when his roof is burning and his family is trapped inside, he does not pick up his suitcase and head for the airport,” he said.

Atiku stressed that his criticism was not based on the principle that a president should never travel or take time off, but on what he described as the severity of Nigeria’s current challenges.

“It is not that a President must never rest or travel. It is that Nigeria is burning, and the President has chosen a boarding pass over the fire extinguisher,” he said.

He further criticised the economic policies of the Tinubu administration, saying Nigerians were struggling to cope with the rising cost of living.

“Millions of Nigerians are being grounded by hardship while their President is airborne,” Atiku said.

He concluded by contrasting his proposed leadership with the current administration, declaring: “Tinubu made Nigeria expensive. I will make Nigeria affordable again.”

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Inferno razes Abuja building materials market, destroys goods worth millions

Published

10 hours ago

August 30, 2026

Advocate News Nigeria

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A fire outbreak has destroyed shops and goods reportedly worth millions of Naira at Eda Plaza, a building materials market located opposite Chida Hotel in Jabi, Abuja.

An eyewitness was quoted by the Nigerian Television Authority NTA as stating that the alarm was raised around 3am on Sunday when his brother-in-law, who owns two shops and a packing store within the affected plaza, received a distress call from a colleague at the market.

National Public Relations Officer and Head, Corporate Services at the Federal Fire Service, Deputy Controller of Fire Paul Abraham, who confirmed the incident said a distress call about the fire, identified as the Eda Plaza fire, was received at 2:46am.

He said the Federal Fire Service, alongside the Federal Capital Territory FCT Fire Service, turned out with appliances from its Wuse, Interior Ministry, and Garki stations to battle the blaze, and that a stop message was issued at 10:14am, signaling that the fire had been brought under control.

Abraham added that investigations into the remote and immediate causes of the fire were currently underway.

Earlier, the eyewitness said there were no casualties in the incident.

He said, “We were at home this morning, as early as 3 am, and my brother-in-law received a call from one of his colleagues here in the plaza that the plaza was on fire. So we had to rush down there. On getting here, we discovered that the situation was so bad”.

By the time they arrived at the scene, the eyewitness said, the fire had already spread extensively, leaving only one of his brother-in-law’s two shops standing.

“In this plaza, my brother-in-law had two shops and a packing store. Unfortunately, only one of the shops was saved. The other shop and the packing store were totally damaged by the fire,” he added.

The eyewitness put the value of roofing materials lost in the blaze at over N20 million, lamenting that some of the destroyed materials had been freshly installed the night before the incident.

“Over here, you see some of the roofs that we still have here. We are talking about a roof that is worth over N20 million lost in this fire,” he said, adding, “Because the other shop, we had roofs that were just restocked last night. And then the packing store also, we had roofs that were just restucked last night.”

Notwithstanding the heavy losses recorded, the eyewitness said he was consoled that the incident claimed no casualties.

“In our situation, we give thanks to God that no life was lost in this situation,” he said. (Vanguard)