Gym classes keep new arrivals in balance

Life in Direct Provision poses many challenges

MY only hope is one day I will be able to work and have the opportunity to provide my own personal shelter for my family.”

Those were the words of Innocent Ogah, a resident of the Eglinton Hotel Direct Provision Centre in Salthill, who was forced to flee Nigeria in September 2015 because “some people were trying to kill us”.

It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to harm, never mind murder, the bubbly 40-year-old married father of four but the serious threat on his life and the safety of his family simply left him with no other option but to up sticks and leave Nigeria’s capital city Lagos in search of a safer life away from the grave crime, violence and killing.

Make no mistake, the threat was very credible and it’s highlighted by the fact that his own brother-in-law was murdered in cold blood in a nation where the murder rate is three times that of the United States.

Read the feature in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald, on sale in shops and online www.tuamherald.ie