|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
About three weeks after BusinessDay published an investigative report exposing widespread corruption at the country’s land borders, the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) has commenced investigation into the matter.
Sunday James, a deputy comptroller and public relations officer of the Service in charge of the Seme Border, told BusinessDay that the report prompted the comptroller general of immigration, Mohammed Babandede, to order an intensive investigation into the matter and report back to him.
BusinessDay’s investigation, published on January 9, 2020 and entitled ‘With just N200 bribe per immigration checkpoint, illegal migrants are infiltrating Nigeria through Sokoto’, had documented how officers of the Immigration Service and other security agencies conspire with mischievous commercial drivers to extort illegal immigrants and permit them entry into Nigeria in a strict bribe-and-pass pattern – at the expense of national security.
In an accompanying video that went viral on the internet, the BusinessDay report captured officers of the Service as well as the police and army collecting bribes to facilitate illegal movements of aliens in and out of Nigeria.
These corruption cases at the borders, the report said, appear more rampant in the northern parts especially Sokoto and Yobe States amidst widespread perception of the porous nature of Nigerian borders.
James said that officers of the service indentified in the video would be sanctioned according to the law if they are found culpable.
“The officers that were identified were brought to the headquarters and they are going to go through the due process of both administrative and professional procedures that have to do with our standard operation. So the public are enjoined to keep their eyes on the operatives and report back to us,” he said.
Rising to the defence of the Immigration Service, James said the Service has made tremendous achievements in the area of border control by the introduction of e-border, where it has deployed technology to monitor movements across the borders. He noted also that the nation has embarked on effective visa and passport system that is helping the Service to control the borders, including e-registration.
He said the Nigerian borders are not porous as being insinuated, stressing, however, that there are unmanned spaces.
“It is because of the unmanned spaces that the Federal Government introduced the Operation Quick Response that brought the military, the immigration, and Customs together so that when we have a full force on ground, we will be able to make sure that these places are covered,” James said.
“Beyond that, the NIS is going into e-border solution where we are deploying advanced technology to help us monitor our borders even from the headquarters here,” he said.
INNOCENT ODOH, Abuja
