Nigeria Brutal Exit

"We were hungry, thirsty and penniless," John Cofie Godigah, 38, recalled last week from a hospital bed in Ghana. "I expected the Nigerians to show some feeling. I was mistaken." Godigah had driven his car from Lagos, Nigeria, to a border station on the Benin frontier, joining a caravan of an estimated 250 vehicles filled with foreigners who were being forced to leave the country. When the crowd tried to force its way across the choked border into Benin, Nigerian guards began firing warning shots and tear gas. Godigah was hit. He awoke in a hospital, was released after treatment and returned to the border. There, he said, "I counted as many as 15 bodies and about 100 injured. Some of the corpses had shattered chests and thighs." His wife had disappeared in the confusion, but the couple was later reunited in Accra, the Ghanaian capital.

There were similar instances of chaos and confusion at other border posts last week as tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, many of them Ghanaians, like the Godigahs, tried to make their way out of Nigeria. Their expulsion was decreed last month by the ruling military junta headed by Major General Mohammed Buhari. Under the order, an estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants living in Nigeria were given until May 10 to leave the country. When the deadline expired, the Nigerian authorities sealed the borders, making virtual prisoners of all those who had been unable to leave the country by land, sea or air. Many were stranded on clogged roads with little money and no food. Some were herded into a Lagos airport terminal normally used by pilgrims departing for Mecca. The refugees were told they would be sent to Apapa, the main port of Lagos, for transport home by ship.

While they waited at the airport, with inadequate supplies of food and water, some of the illegal immigrants looted a warehouse. Others broke out of the terminal and raided nearby farms. Shooting was reported at some border posts as the increasingly frustrated refugees tried to drive their vehicles through closed crossings or escape by foot along bush paths. A few claimed that their vehicles were smashed or stolen and that they were robbed of their belongings.

At week's end the Ghanaian leader, Flight Lieut. Jerry Rawlings, denounced the expulsions as well as "the reported incidents of brutality perpetrated . . . against Ghanaians and other nationals." By that time the pressure had eased somewhat, and 4,000 to 5,000 people a day were being permitted to leave Nigeria. But thousands still remained.