The Director-General of the Belgian Office for Foreigners, Freddy Roosemont, disclosed this during a press conference held in Abuja on Friday.

Roosemont said, “The dream is not real. It is not easy to survive in Europe without a decent job. The dream is fake. Belgium is not the land of milk and honey, nor is Europe. The highest number of forced prostitutes in Belgium are Nigerians.

“Once in Belgium, they apply for asylum, but this makes little sense. Asylum is determined based on the Geneva Convention, and economic motives are not included. Therefore, the recognition rate for asylum is very low, and the chances of obtaining a residence permit are almost nonexistent.

“We then see some trying to move to other countries within Europe, but there they will also see that they have already requested asylum in Belgium. Consequently, this European country will send them back to Belgium, where they will have to return to Nigeria.

“As a consequence, people are forced to live an irregular life without a social safety net in precarious conditions. They risk economic exploitation, and women risk ending up in prostitution.”

The DG added that “no fewer than 362 Nigerian migrants sought asylum in 2022, while 380 of them applied in 2023,” adding that only a few of them got their application granted.

He urged Nigerians to ignore those trying to deceive them into embarking on the journey to Europe without admission to a university, a job offer from a Belgian company, or an invitation from a family member to relocate.

“Do not invest money in the very risky journey through the Mediterranean or fill the pockets of human traffickers. Invest in your education, building on the realisation of your dreams in Nigeria. A stay in Belgium, through regular channels, can be a useful complement,” the DG added.

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The impressive Lukaku struck in the first half at King Baudouin Stadium on Sunday to give the Red Devils a deserved victory.

Injury-blighted Hazard came off the bench late on to make his first Belgium appearance for 19 months.
This has come just six days before Roberto Martinez’s side face Russia in their first match of the European Championship.

Zlatko Dalic’s Croatia side lacked a cutting edge in Brussels a week prior to their opening game of Euro 2020 against England at Wembley.

Croatia started positively but the Red Devils started to look increasingly threatening, Nacer Chadli blazing over the crossbar from outside the penalty area.

Lukaku was proving a real handful and the striker rattled the post with a left-footed strike after turning sharply, with Yannick Carrasco heading against the crossbar following up.

Croatia were made to pay by Lukaku seven minutes before the break after some slack defending.
The prolific Inter Milan frontman drilled home with his right foot from six yards after Jason Denayer nodded the ball into his path.

Bruno Petkovic twice called Thibaut Courtois into action early in the second half as Croatia went in search of an equaliser.

Carrasco spurned a good opportunity to double the Red Devils’ lead when he sliced wide and a Lukaku header deflected off target.

Croatia boss Dalic made a whole host of changes in the second half, but Belgium saw out the victory and Real Madrid man Hazard gave them another lift when he came on with nine minutes to go.

Hazard was given a short outing and Lukaku came close to a second goal when his close-range header was superbly kept out by Dominik Livakovic.

Josip Brekalo could have snatched a stoppage-time equaliser, but his shot was well saved by Courtois as Belgium held on for the win.

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Leicester’s Youri Tielemans opened the scoring after just three minutes with a drilled finish.

Jonas Wind headed in an equaliser but Lukaku turned in Kevin de Bruyne’s pass before heading home a third.

A Nacer Chadli own goal reduced the deficit but De Bruyne swept in a fourth for Belgium.

The victory means Roberto Martinez’s side, who beat England 2-0 on Sunday to end the Three Lions’ hopes of reaching the finals, finish top of Group A2.

They join France, Spain and Italy in the finals, which will take place in October 2021.

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Lukaku’s double means the Manchester United striker is now joint top scorer at the tournament with four goals, alongside Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.

Chelsea’s Hazard opened the scoring from the spot in the sixth minute after a VAR review confirmed he had been fouled just inside the area by Syam Ben Youssef.

Lukaku grabbed the first of his goals when he converted Dries Mertens’ ball to double Belgium’s lead.

That advantage was reduced only 109 seconds later when Dylan Bronn, who later came off with what appeared to be a serious knee injury, headed in the equaliser.

But in first-half stoppage time, Lukaku re-established the two-goal lead with an excellent dinked finished past keeper Farouk Ben Mustapha.

Hazard scored his second early in the second half when he converted Manchester City midfielder Kevin de Bruyne’s brilliant raking pass.

Belgium substitute Michy Batshuayi had three chances to score a fifth before he finally managed to find the net with a low finish from Youri Tielemans’ cross in the 90th minute.

Sunderland forward Wahbi Khazri scored a stoppage-time consolation goal for Tunisia, who are heading for elimination.

The Red Devils lead Group G with six points. England are second with three, and will book their passage into the knockout round if they defeat Panama on Sunday (13:00 BST) – a match which will be broadcast live on BBC One and on this website.

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After a goalless first half Belgium, ranked third in the world, finally broke Panama’s resistance when Dries Mertens steered in a spectacular 15-yard volley early in the second half.

Panama, 55th in the rankings, had a chance to snatch an equaliser but Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was quick off his line to save Michael Murillo’s shot with his legs.

Manchester United striker Lukaku made certain of the victory as he scored with a diving header after an exquisite cross from Kevin de Bruyne with the outside of his boot.

Lukaku then added a third with a chipped finish after a fine through ball from Chelsea’s Eden Hazard.

Belgium take on Tunisia in their second match on Saturday, 23 June (13:00 BST), before Panama are England’s second opponents a day later (13:00 BST).

Gareth Southgate’s side play their first game of the tournament later on Monday against Tunisia in Volgograd (19:00 BST).

Belgium, who included seven British-based players in their starting line-up, scored 43 goals in qualifying, a joint record for a European team, but suffered a frustrating first 45 minutes in Sochi.

Panama’s goalkeeper Jaime Penedo denied Yannick Carrasco, Mertens, Hazard and Lukaku in the opening 40 minutes as the Central Americans battled hard to try to contain one of the World Cup favourites.

The Europeans also failed to capitalise on two Panama errors when Hazard shot into the side-netting after a short Roman Torres backpass, before Mertens also missing the target when allowed to shoot from a quickly-taken short corner.

The opening matches at the World Cup have seen Brazil and Argentina both draw their opening matches, with holders Germany losing to Mexico.

But Belgium ensured there would be no upset at the Fisht Stadium as Mertens took advantage of Panama failing to clear their lines with a superb volley over Penedo.

They had a chance to double their lead as De Bruyne curled a free-kick wide before Lukaku dived in to score from the Manchester City midfielder’s pass and settle any Belgian nerves.

Six minutes later Lukaku grabbed his second and Belgium’s third with a composed over the advancing Penedo.

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All three goals came in a five-minute second-half period, which began with Vertonghen firing Belgium ahead.

Zeca brought Greece level soon after but Lukaku scored the final goal with a glancing header a minute later.

Belgium lead Group H by eight points with two games to play.

The Red Devils join Brazil, Mexico, Iran and Japan in qualifying for the World Cup, with Russia automatically getting a place as hosts.

Bosnia-Herzegovina have moved ahead of Greece in the race to claim a play-off spot as Edin Dzeko scored twice in a 4-0 win in Gibraltar to take them up to second place.

Kenan Kodro and Senad Lulic got the other goals for Mehmed Bazdarevic’s side, who have 14 points, one more than Greece.

Switzerland maintained their three-point advantage over European champions Portugal after both claimed wins on Sunday.

An own goal from home keeper Andris Vanins, a strike from Blerim Dzemaili – who had earlier missed a penalty – and a successful spot-kick from Ricardo Rodriguez gave the Swiss a 3-0 win in Latvia.

Portugal took advantage of Tamas Priskin being sent off to claim a 1-0 win in Hungary, with Andre Silva scoring the goal.

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Unable to control his violent sexual urges, Frank Van Den Bleeken, who is 50, argued he would never be freed.

The decision follows a three-year legal battle by the prisoner, who was convicted in the 1980s.

The ruling is the first involving a prisoner since the assisted dying law was introduced in Belgium 12 years ago.

Van Den Bleeken will soon be transferred to a hospital where the medical procedure will take place, his lawyers told reporters.

“But I cannot say when or where that will happen,” Jos Vander Velpen added

Van Den Bleeken first requested euthanasia in 2011, citing “unbearable psychological anguish”, but Belgium’s Federal Euthanasia Commission wanted to consider every possible treatment option, before consenting to such a measure.

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In September 1976, a package containing a shiny, blue thermos flask arrived at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.

Working in the lab that day was Peter Piot, a 27-year-old scientist and medical school graduate training as a clinical microbiologist.

“It was just a normal flask like any other you would use to keep coffee warm,” recalls Piot, now Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

But this thermos wasn’t carrying coffee – inside was an altogether different cargo. Nestled amongst a few melting ice cubes were vials of blood along with a note.

It was from a Belgian doctor based in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo – his handwritten message explained that the blood was that of a nun, also from Belgium, who had fallen ill with a mysterious illness which he couldn’t identify.

This unusual delivery had travelled all the way from Zaire’s capital city Kinshasa, on a commercial flight, in one of the passengers’ hand luggage.

“When we opened the thermos, we saw that one of the vials was broken and blood was mixing with the water from the melted ice,” says Piot.

He and his colleagues were unaware just how dangerous that was. As the blood leaked into the icy water so too did a deadly unknown virus.

The samples were treated like numerous others the lab had tested before, but when the scientists placed some of the cells under an electron microscope they saw something they didn’t expect.

“We saw a gigantic worm like structure – gigantic by viral standards,” says Piot. “It’s a very unusual shape for a virus, only one other virus looked like that and that was the Marburg virus.”

The Marburg virus was first recognised in 1967 when 31 people became ill with haemorrhagic fever in the cities of Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany and in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia.

This Marburg outbreak was associated with laboratory staff who were working with infected monkeys imported from Uganda – seven people died.

Piot knew how serious Marburg could be – but after consulting experts around the world he got confirmation that what he was seeing under the microscope wasn’t Marburg – this was something else, something never seen before.

“It’s hard to describe but the main emotion I had was one of real, incredible excitement,” says Piot. “There was a feeling of being very privileged, that this was a moment of discovery.”

News had reached Antwerp that the nun, who was under the care of the doctor in Zaire, had died. The team also learnt that many others were falling ill with this mysterious illness in a remote area in the north of the country – their symptoms included fever, diarrhoea and vomiting followed by bleeding and eventually death.

Two weeks later Piot, who had never been to Africa before, was on a flight to Kinshasa. “It was an overnight flight and I couldn’t sleep. I was so excited about seeing Africa for the first time, about investigating this new virus and about stopping the epidemic.”

The journey didn’t end in Kinshasa – the team had to travel to the centre of the outbreak, a village in the equatorial rainforest, about 1,000km (620 miles) further north.

“The personal physician of President Mobutu, the leader of Zaire at that time, arranged a C-130 transport aircraft for us,” recalls Piot. They loaded a Landrover, fuel and all the equipment they needed on to the plane.

When the C-130 landed in Bumba, a river port situated on the northernmost point of the Congo River, the fear surrounding the mysterious disease was tangible. Even the pilots didn’t want to hang around for long – they kept the airplane’s engines running as the team unloaded their kit.

“As they left they shouted ‘Adieu,'” says Piot. “In French, people say ‘Au Revoir’ to say ‘See you again’, but when they say ‘Adieu’ – well, that’s like saying, ‘We’ll never see you again.'”

Standing on the tarmac watching the plane leave, facing a deadly unknown virus in an unfamiliar place, some people might have regretted the decision to go there.

“I wasn’t scared. The excitement of discovery and wanting to stop the epidemic was driving everything. We heard far more people were dying from the disease than we originally thought and we wanted to get to work,” Piot says.

The curiosity and sense of adventure that brought Piot to this point had been ignited many years earlier when he was a young boy growing up in a small rural village in the Flanders region of Belgium.

A museum near Piot’s home was dedicated to a local saint who worked with leprosy patients, and it was here that he got his first glimpse into the world of disease and microbiology.

“I decided one day to cycle to the museum. The old pictures I saw there of those suffering from leprosy fascinated me,” he says. “That sparked my interest in medicine – it gave me a thirst for scientific knowledge, a desire to help people and I hoped it would give me a passport to the world.”

It did give Piot a passport to the world. The team’s final destination was the village of Yambuku – about 120km (75 miles) from Bumba, where the plane had left them.

Yambuku was home to an old Catholic mission – it had a hospital and a school run by a priest and nuns, all of them from Belgium.

“The area was beautiful. The mission was surrounded by lush rainforest and the earth was red – the nature was incredibly rich but the people were so poor,” says Piot. “Joseph Conrad called that place ‘The Heart of Darkness’, but I thought there was a lot of light there.”

The beauty of Yambuku belied the horror that was unfolding for the people that lived there.

When Piot arrived, the first people he met were a group of nuns and a priest who had retreated to a guesthouse and established their own cordon sanitaire – a barrier used to prevent the spread of disease.

There was a sign on the cord, written in the local Lingala language that read, “Please stop, anybody who crosses here may die.”

“They had already lost four of their colleagues to the disease,” says Piot. “They were praying and waiting for death.”

Piot jumped over the cordon and told them that the team would help them and stop the epidemic. “When you are 27, you have all this confidence,” he says.

The nuns told the newly arrived scientists what had happened, they spoke about their colleagues and those in the village who had died and how they tried to help as best they could.

The priority was to stop the epidemic, but first the team needed to find out how this virus was moving from person to person – by air, in food, by direct contact or spread by insects. “We had to start asking questions. It was really like a detective story,” says Piot.

These were the three questions they asked:

•How did the epidemic evolve? Knowing when each person caught the virus gave clues to what kind of infection this was – from here the story of the virus began to emerge.

•Where did the infected people come from? The team visited all the surrounding villages and mapped out the number of infections – it was clear that the outbreak was closely related to areas served by the local hospital.

•Who gets infected? The team found that more women than men caught the disease and particularly women between 18 and 30 years old – it turned out that many of the women in this age group were pregnant and many had attended an antenatal clinic at the hospital.

The mystery of the virus was beginning to unravel.

The team then discovered that the women who attended the antenatal clinic all received a routine injection. Each morning, just five syringes would be distributed, the needles would be reused and so the virus was spread between the patients.

“That’s how we began to figure it out,” recalls Piot. “You do it by talking, looking at the statistics and using logical deduction.”

Culled from the BBC

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The north African side took a shock lead when Sofiane Feghouli scored from the spot after being fouled by Tottenham defender Jan Vertonghen.

Manchester United’s Fellaini, a second-half substitute, equalised with a looping header shortly after coming on.

And Mertens scored the winner when he finished off a swift counter-attack.

The 80th-minute strike prompted an eruption of relief from the Belgium bench, not least from coach Marc Wilmots, who had spent most of the match looking understandably pensive.

His side had 65 per cent possession but for most of the game found it difficult to penetrate an Algeria defence marshalled by former Rangers centre-half Madjid Bougherra.

The European side, the seeded team in the group and widely tipped to do well in Brazil after an impressive qualifying campaign, fielded an imposing starting XI, with the Chelsea pair of Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku in attack, while Spurs’ Mousa Dembele and former Chelsea man Kevin de Bruyne sat in midfield.

Pre-tournament fifth favourites with some bookmakers, they looked anything but for 69 minutes.

They were rocked in the 24th minute when forward Feghouli was hauled down by Vertonghen in the area as he aimed to convert Faouzi Ghoulam’s cross.

The Valencia player recovered to sidefoot a tame penalty past another Blues player Thibaut Courtois, who dived the wrong way. That was Algeria’s first World Cup goal since 1986 – 506 minutes of football.

Belgium’s best early chances were from long distance and fell to Zenit St Petersburg’s Axel Witsel, who had two efforts saved before failing to convert a header.

The pattern changed with the Belgium substitutions. First to test the goal was 19-year-old Lille striker Divock Origi, who forced a brilliant low save from Rais Mbolhi.

Gaps began to grow in a tiring Algeria defence, and a fresh Fellaini took advantage of that when he out-muscled marker Carl Medjani and flicked his effort beyond the reach of Mbolhi.

The winner came from a move that showed off Belgium’s attack at its best.

De Bruyne tackled Feghouli in his own half and when the ball found its way to Hazard on the left, the PFA young player of the year sped down the wing and fed Mertens, who slammed his shot high into the net.

Belgium almost grabbed a third through Fellaini, but Mbolhi produced another good save from point-blank range.

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