1,490 Illegal Routes Impedes Effective Border Security Says Comptroller General

The Acting Comptroller General, Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) Mr Idris Jere has said that 1,490 illegal routes into the country was a major challenge at effectively policing the Nigerian borders.

Jere said this during a zoom conference meeting with journalist in Lagos State.

He, however, said that the NIS had stepped up it's game to improve mobile security around the borders and increase the number of personnel's for effective security.

"As elections approach, the security of this counuos for all and security effort shave been intensified to ensure safety of our borders," he said.

Jere said that the NIS had also adopted the Migrant Registration approach to track the movements of old and young people into the country in order to reduce the intensity of illegal migrants.

"This has helped us to clamp down on some of the migrants without due papers but you will be surprised that some of them have papers to be legal migrants.

"Three Sudanese were recently apprehended and detained in our facility so we are working assiduously to ensure security all year round," he said.

The Comptroller General said that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed the domestication of passport production to private companies within the country instead of out sourcing it's production.

"The process is already ongoing and would be concluded shortly because it will also help reduce cost of production," Jere said.

He said that the reason why the NIS had a backlog of expired passports was as a result of the disruption in activities brought about by the on set of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jere, however, said that the service had been working tirelessly and did not have more than 9,000 backlogs of passports which he said would soon be cleared.