About five months after they were deported by Ukrainian government for allegedly shooting a police officer, some of the Nigerian cadets who were affected have confirmed their arrival in Nigeria.
Even though the maritime training institution that took them to Ukraine initially denied the deportation story, one of the young Nigerian cadets confirmed in an e-mail to Shipping Position Weekly that majority of the more than 20 cadets who had gone to Ukraine to better their professional lots have since arrived Nigeria.
Confirming their arrival in Nigeria, one of the cadets who did not disclosed his identified sent an e – mail to [email protected] explaining that “most of us are in the country and we are expecting few to arrive the country”.
The writer who claimed to be writing on behalf of other cadets however lamented that their deportation has adversely affected them and blamed it on the story that was broken exclusively by Shipping Position Weekly in December 2008.
The controversial story which had the headline “Shame: Nigerian Cadets Deported from Ukraine” was introduced to us by one of the affected cadets who had stated that he stumbled on our web site: www.shippingposition.com in Ukraine
According to the cadet who also kept his identity, trouble started when the cadets who were already engaged aboard Ukrainian ships got wind of the fact that some young, innocent Nigerians were also on their ways to Ukraine on the same ‘sea time’ programme.
“We decided to storm the airport and wait for Engineer Yusuf who is coordinating us, we fired shots at the airport to make a point that we meant business, because he has defrauded us and we have been trying to reach him to no avail”, the cadet added.
The gun shot reportedly accidentally hit a Ukrainian Police officer and from then on, their troubles started and this culminated in their deportation.
But last week, one of the deportee-cadets sent an e-mail to us in which he gave an insight into what he and his colleagues have been going through since their sudden arrival in Nigeria.
In the mail, he lamented that the story that was carried by this newspaper portrayed the cadets as murderers and that it has been difficult for them to secure employment as no employer was wiling to engage them.
The unidentified writer who claimed to be writing on behalf of other cadets threatened that he and other cadets who had already arrived as well as those whom they are expecting would on arrival all storm the corporate office of Shipping Position Weekly which it blamed for their current plight.
The embattled cadets had completed their pre- sea training programme in a Nigerian academy called African Maritime Academy which is owned by one Engineer Yusuf before embarking on the trip to Ukraine.
But trouble started when they specifically accused him of being the middleman “between us and the companies that own the ship on which we were engaged as officer cadets, he also collects our entitlements, but does not pay us in full”.
They became enraged and staged a waiting game for the marine engineer at the airport when the cadets who were already engaged aboard Ukrainian ships got wind of the fact that some young, innocent Nigerians were on their ways to Ukraine on the same programme; courtesy of Engineer Yusuf.
“We decided to storm the airport and wait for Engineer Yusuf who is coordinating us, we fired shots at the airport to make a point that we meant business, because he has defrauded us and we have been trying to reach him to no avail”, one of the cadets had told Shipping Position Weekly via an e – mail last year.
Our source had confirmed that one of the gun shots that were fired allegedly hit a Ukrainian Police officer, a development which elicited the deportation order.
Even though, previous attempts to reach engineer Yusuf was rebuffed, Shipping Position Weekly successfully got him last week and he confirmed the plight of the cadets whom he referred to as ingrates.
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