After four-week sea odyssey, Liberian refugees seek asylum in Lagos: UN agency

Most of the 156 Liberian passengers on board a ship that docked last week in Lagos after a month-long odyssey at sea have indicated that they are seeking asylum in Nigeria, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which completed the first day of interviews with the group on Wednesday.

The passengers, who had left Monrovia on board a Swedish-registered ship named Alnar on 1 June, had been refused entry in Ghana, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told the press in Geneva.

Continuing along the coast, the boat moored off the coast of Benin and later Togo without obtaining authorization to dock. The Government of Nigeria then agreed on "humanitarian grounds" that the ship could dock in Lagos and indicated it would be willing to grant asylum to its passengers.

Passengers coming off the ship on Tuesday morning received food, water, blankets, and kitchen tools from UNHCR and other relief agencies at the port. After a medical examination, which revealed their overall condition to be "satisfactory, " they were transported by bus to Oru refugee camp, some 120 kilometres west of Lagos.

According to UNHCR, Oru already has close to 2,000 refugees, all of them from Sierra Leone. Overall, Nigeria is hosting 7,200 refugees - mainly from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Chad.