Mrs Rose Uzoma, the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, has cautioned Nigerians to desist from saying many multinational companies are abusing expatriate quota. Uzoma, who gave the advice on Sunday in Abuja, said that the relevant agencies were always ensuring that they did not breach their expatriate quota  allocations.

She said: “the Nigerian government goes to other parts of the world to woo investors and when they come, they establish businesses or industries that provide jobs for Nigerians. That is not to say that we allow them to violate the law,” Uzoma stressed.

“Sometimes there is a misconception. We have a population of about 120 million Nigerians and when you have population of less than a million foreigners; would you say we have too many  foreigners among us?

“For me I will say we need more foreigners in this country, provided they are the right caliber of foreigners. We need investors because if they come here and establish business or industries,  when they are going they will not carry it away. And I always say that any business concern that can employ up to 20 Nigerians is quite desirable. All we need to ensure is that they pay their tax and they don”t break our laws.

So, let not look at any time we see foreigners we say it is abused of expatriates quota. Definitely, there are some people who don”t conform with the laws, but we always remove them  when we find them out.  Uzoma also explained that Nigerians must understand rules governing visa applications before demanding retaliatory measures on nationals whose countries would not bend the rules just to issue visas anyhow.

She recalled an interactive session she was engaged recently in London after the British government issued a new visa policy and some Nigerians there were asking that Nigeria should institute retaliatory measure against British nationals planning to visit Nigeria.

“Before I left to the interactive session, I took my time to find out how many British people were living and working in Nigeria. If I remember correctly, there were 586 of them living and  working legally in Nigeria.  “And then I asked those Nigerians at the session in London to tell me how many Nigerians they thought were living in the UK. They said they were about three million. I say wait.

So if we send away some 400 Britons and they send back three million people, what did they think would happen?”  Uzoma also said that there were many Nigerian businessmen and women plying their trades all over the world and that it was necessary not to be harsh on foreigners living in Nigeria legitimately. She said that any foreigner found committing crime would be dealt with, though.

The immigration boss also recalled that the administration of deceased President Umaru Yar”Adua and signed an agreement on the construction of a cement factory in Nigeria with a Chinese company,  which would source finance in the international market.  The fund repayment had a deadline and the Chinese company had to mobilize manpower to execute the project in record time. She then queried if it was improper for the company to move in staff to make the project achievable.

Bharti Airtel and other global telcos launch EIG for commercial use

Bharti Airtel has announced the launch of Europe India Gateway (EIG) cable system that will enhance diversity and capacity between Europe and India. The 15,000 Km cable has received investment of around $700 million and has a capacity of 3.84 terabits per second.

EIG stretches from Mumbai in India to London UK, with landings enroute in UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Monaco & Marseilles, Gibraltar, Portugal and the UK. Apart from the segment of EIG in Egypt, the remaining cable is now available for commercial use.

With the launch of EIG, Bharti Airtel added 3rd state-of-the-art cable to its existing infrastructure on India-Middle East- Europe route.

The seamless connection and combination between landing stations of IMEWE, EIG and SMW4 will allow Bharti Airtel to offer enhanced redundancy and network resilience to the customers in India, Middle East and Asia Pacific region.

The company has been elected by the consortium to provide services relating to Network Administration and Network Operations Control functions for EIG.

The deployment of EIG will also boost the connectivity requirements of the African continent by complementing the largest existing submarine cable in Africa, the EASSy cable in which Airtel has investments. Airtel will have the capability to connect its capacities in EIG and EASSy seamlessly _ this will offer customers enhanced international connectivity and network diversity.

Ajay Chitkara, CEO _ Global Data Business, Bharti Airtel said, “It has been our endeavour at Bharti Airtel to create flexible and robust under sea cable infrastructure for our customers. Both EIG and IMEWE land in our landing station in India (Mumbai). The extra capacity and reliability provided by EIG will help us to meet the surging bandwidth requirements witnessed by the Middle East and Africa.

The availability of diverse routes and unmatched resilience on Bharti Airtel’s infrastructure will stimulate the emergence of India as a preferred transit hub for the customers in the region. Commencement of EIG is an important milestone in the telecommunications infrastructure and Bharti Airtel is proud to be a part of the global consortium to build the same.”

When fully activated with the Egypt link, the EIG will be the first direct high_bandwidth optical fiber system from the UK to India. In addition to complementing existing high_bandwidth cable systems in the region, the EIG will provide much needed diversity for broadband traffic, which currently relies on traditional routes from Europe to India.