By Emma Nnadozie

THE Controller-General, Nigeria Immigration Service, Mrs. Rose Chinyere Uzoma, recently bared her mind on a wide range of issues bordering on her achievements in office, constraints facing the service, efforts to tackle them and the way forward. Her revelations, especially in the area of the porosity of our borders and the influx of foreigners into the country, were as shocking as it was astounding.  Excerpts:

ACHIEVEMENTS: On assumption of office, I discovered it is very necessary to carry everybody along, to give everyone the opportunity to contribute his or her quota. It has been a team affair. That is a quantum achievement, even when it appears invisible.

We secured a piece of land which we are using for a post housing scheme for Immigration Officers and the general public. We also expanded the directorate of the services from three to seven, created additional seven commands in Lagos and Rivers states and introduced the new visa policy which I consider as one of my greatest achievements.

*Mrs. Rose Chinyere Uzoma, Controller-General, Nigeria Immigration Service

Aside the total closure of borders during the 2011 general elections, we also attracted the Federal Government to award contracts for the production of extra six million e-passport booklets and installed the night vision/ICT equipment in Nigeria Immigration Service border surveillance aircraft.

One other important achievement recorded by my administration is the introduction of e-registration which is our strategic response to proper monitoring of foreigners of ECOWAS/African descent. We were able to collect and configure machines used by INEC during the 2006/2007 voters registration exercise to enable us collate and maintain the data of ECOWAS Nationals and African citizens in Nigeria for the purpose of  monitoring their activities very closely.

It is also necessary to inform you that shortly after my assumption of office, we were able to impress on the Federal Government to approve the deployment of Immigration attachés to more of our Missions abroad. Before I assumed office, we had only 10 officers in five Nigerian Missions.

Today, there are 46 of our officers covering 12 foreign Missions, far more than the five we were covering before I assumed office. This has gone a long way in ensuring that foreigners and Nigerians in Diaspora enjoy more efficient and professional services from our operatives in those Missions.

e-passport intervention

Closely related to this is the fact that the period I assumed office coincided with the phasing-out of the Machine Readable Passport (MRP). We had to undertake a massive e-passport intervention exercise to meet the huge demands for the essential travel documents by Nigerians in Diaspora.

This measure was able to alleviate the plight of Nigerians who would have fallen out of status if we had not intervened by providing them with the e-passport in the various countries of their residence. It would have necessitated majority of Diaspora Nigerians returning to the country to process their e-passport and the aggregate cost would have been unprecedented on them.

Porosity of our borders and measures for permanent solution

My men have turned back over 35,000 foreigners since the beginning of the year when the borders were closed. We are not unmindful of the fact that the closure of some areas of our international borders could necessitate immigrants attempting to gain entry through other areas.

Therefore, we have stepped up our activities in all areas of our operational land borders. But this has not been easy. The challenges have been quite tasking, we have had to discharge this herculean task with limited human and material resources.

If you know how vast and porous our borders are, you will surely appreciate the feat and sacrifices made by the operatives of our Service in manning these borders. I have to acknowledge the support of other security agencies in achieving the expectations of the Federal Government vis-a-vis the closure of some land borders.

The porous and chaotic nature of our borders poses severe security challenges for the nation and in particular, the Nigeria Immigration Service in the arduous task of border control and management. The difficult terrain in most of these border locations, existence of settlements along border lines without regard for buffer zones and the contiguous nature of our borders make effective migration management a quite herculean task.

I think the situation will improve remarkably if border settlers are relocated to distant locations from the buffer zones to give statutory security agencies at the borders the latitude to operate within clearly defined border territories. Under a scenario like this, it will be very clear to any person entering or leaving the country that he or she is crossing international boundaries.

The current experience where houses are built along border lines makes strict control impossible. I know that clearing buffer zones of settlements has huge cost implications as border settlers will have to be provided with new accommodation and other basic facilities.

Properly secured borders

However, it is of great essence to recognize the need for such programme. We can start gradually and over the years, total relocation will be achieved. The entire nation can then go to sleep trusting that all aspects of our borders are properly secured. We can also remedy the present situation with the construction of border plazas or auto-gates, equipped with all necessary modern migration management facilities as obtained in most international borders.

Again, border operatives need to be adequately provided with office and residential accommodation as well as other necessary operational logistics. A situation where Immigration officers stay under trees with rope tied across the road without adequate arms and ammunition does not create proper atmosphere to discharge their duties effectively.

In many cases, you find border security operatives residing in houses owned by suspected human traffickers and smugglers.  Under such situation do you expect these people to live up to desired expectations?  This is why it is very necessary to make necessary provisions for security operatives in border locations.

Coping with the scarce resources available in the Service

It has not been easy, at all, meeting the competing demands in the Service.  Of course, there is hardly any MDA that has sufficient resources to discharge its responsibilities and obligations. I must tell you that Immigration Service does not fare better.  We operate under very tight circumstances as budgetary provisions for us are grossly inadequate to tackle the issues of effective border control and migration management.

It has been my desire to provide necessary operational facilities for officers and men of the Service to enhance service delivery including vehicles, communication gadgets, arms and ammunition, conducive office and residential accommodation; however, the funds are simply insufficient. Sometimes, we find it difficult to repatriate illegal immigrants due to lack of funds.  This is why I am advocating for the Service to retain portion of revenue it generates to be able to tackle some of these challenges.

Performance enhancement

This will go a long way in enhancing the performance of the Service.

Rumour of mismanagement  of funds in the Service

It is a baseless concoction and deliberate attempt to smear my hard-earned reputation.  What happened is that shortly after the Federal Government imposed partial state of emergence in parts of Borno and Yobe States among others, it made the closure of borders in those two states imperative.  We therefore sought for and received a grant of twenty million to ensure that we enforced the border closure order.

Perhaps, some officers of the Service might have erroneously thought that the money was meant to be shared amongst them.  I wish to reiterate here that the fund was not meant to be shared, rather,  it was intended to facilitate total enforcement of border closure.