In a bid to halt the influx
of some undocumented migrants into the Country, the Federal Government of Nigeria has commenced a
process of setting up a Command and Control Centre to check irregular migration
into the country.
The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, disclosed this
on Monday in Abuja at the induction ceremony for operational officers of the
Command and Control Centre for Regular Migration, stressing that Nigeria is at
the centre of migration management within the subregion
He said that Nigeria does not have the luxury that some
other countries have, because of its geographical location.
“We are in the Sahel region and the Gulf of Guinea. The
tendency for migration towards Nigeria from the sahelian states is there.
“What we are doing today is the regular migration command
and control centre. Very soon, we will come up with the irregular migration
command and control centre. We won’t just rely on our airports but ensure that
our land and marine borders, anybody coming in, is pre-profiled. Very soon the
president will be commissioning the e-gates in our international airports.
“This is a scheme where there is no margin of error, where
you cannot guess work, where you have to be mentally alert and ready to
sacrifice for the sake of the fatherland. Security must be 100 percent accurate
and not 99.9 percent because the 0.1 percent inaccuracy can destroy the 99
percent. Therefore, we are providing the clock power supply because we cannot
afford to have downtime.
“Finally, NIS is beginning to give meaning to its name, in
that it has gone beyond just a travel document processing agency but a critical
organ in terms of our national security architecture.
“The national call to duty doesn’t come bigger than this. A
lot depends on you. The ability of Nigerians to sleep with their two eyes
closed depends on you.
“With the infrastructure in the command and control centre,
it means that nobody, not a single person should be able to come into Nigeria
without us pre-profiling him. The government has equipped you to do objective
screening and no longer subjective screening”.
Also speaking, Comptroller General of the Nigerian
Immigration Service NIS, Kemi Nandap said 123 officers and men who scaled
through rigorous fundamental training were selected to work on the centre.
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