Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, has threatened to publish names of former government officials still holding on to their diplomatic passports and other such travel documents.
Comptroller General of the Service, Martin Kure Abeshi, who stated this yesterday after a brief ceremony to unveil his agenda to officers and men of the NIS, however, stated that the service has received well over 200 of such passports from former government officials.
While saying that many of them had complied with the presidential directive ordering withdrawal of such official documents, Abeshi said he was giving others a period of grace, after which he would engage in a name-and-shame exercise.
“The response has been very tremendous. We have collected about 200. It is almost on a daily basis. I am also advising those who have not returned theirs to bring them because very soon I will publish the names of those who collected diplomatic and other such documents. I will continue to respect them for now, because some of them are statesmen in their own right, but if they refuse to comply within the period of grace, I will have no option than to publish their names,” he said.
Abeshi, who said the service recently lost three officers to insurgency in the North East, also stated that two men have been arrested in connection with the botched visit of Chief Imam of the Islamic State in Syria, ISIS, Ahmed Al- Assir, in August.
The duo was picked up in Kano State by intelligence officers of the NIS after it was established that al-Assir was to visit Nigeria at their behest.
“When through our intelligence gathering, we were told that the man was heading to Nigeria, we identified the people who were to host him. Immediately, my officers went to Kano and arrested two of them and handed them over to relevant authorities,” he explained.
On the nation’s porous borders, Abeshi revealed that the service is already putting together a document that would be presented to the government, detailing proposals on how to secure them.
He said the technological advancement being witnessed all over the world has shown that the current method of managing Nigeria’s borders is archaic.
Speaking on the issue of passport racketeering, Abeshi said: “The NIS now has a new Immigration Act 2015. The Act provides for penalties to be meted out to officers who abuse the passport process. If you do it, you will be charged to court and if found guilty, imprisoned.”
He suggested that in border areas that are volatile, physical demarcation could be done while in less volatile areas, some electronic devices that could pick human signals within a distance of five kilometres could be established while officers and patrol vehicles are stationed at strategic points along the border for prompt action.
While he conceded that it is not feasible to fence the nation’s vast border areas, the CG however opined that there are areas where the best way to secure them is to erect physical demarcations
