GIAIM condemns death of 26 Nigerian women on Spanish warship

GIAIM condemns death of 26 Nigerian women on Spanish warship

ON November 11, 2017 2:43 AM / IN News / BY Ugoh Solomon Chinonso
By Lawani Mikairu
The Global Initiative Against Illegal Migration, GIAIM, a non–profit making organisation focused on fighting illegal migration, has condemned the death of 26 Nigerian women believed to be migrants recovered from a Spanish warship in the Italian coast city of Salerno.
A report by the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday said a Spanish warship, Cantabria, which docked in the city, was found to be carrying 375 rescued migrants and the dead women. It also quoted Italian media report that the women’s bodies were kept in a refrigerated section of the warship. Most of them were between the ages of 14 and 18.
UNHCR spokesman, Marco Rotunno, said the 26 dead were involved in a shipwreck off Libya. Most of the 375 survivors brought to Salerno were sub-Saharan Africans from Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, The Gambia and Sudan, the daily La Repubblica reports.
Among them were 90 women – eight of them pregnant – and 52 children. There were also some Libyan men and women on board.
Reacting to the development, the Executive Director, Barrister Emmanuel Osime Obinyan, blamed the harsh economic situation in the country for the tragedy.