BENIN CITY ––The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is to commence the collation of Biometric and electronic data collation of all foreigners in Nigeria before the end of this year.
The exercise, the Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr. Chukwurah Udeh, said was to ascertain the actual number of legal and illegal immigrants in the country.
Mr. Udeh who was in Government House, Benin City on a courtesy call on Edo State Acting Governor, Mr. Lucky Imasuen said the move was necessary to boost the security situation of Nigeria.
While sueing for the cooperation of the state government during the exercise, the NIS boss said the Nigerian government was faced with a daunting challenge to review its immigration laws in a manner that would be in conformity with modern trend.
He remarked that many countries had recently reviewed their laws on immigrants, a development which led to the high rate of repatriation of Nigerians.
While praying the state government to complement the NIS efforts in checking illegal migration, the NIS boss also prayed the state government to help sensitise the people on negative implication of illegal migration to foreign land in search of greener pastures.
In his reaction, Mr. Imasuen enumerated government efforts at providing enabling environment for meaningful employment of youths to include the establishment of Skills Acquisition Centres.
This, he said, was done to discourage the unending quest to travel out of the country for non-existent greener pasture.
According to him, the government’s action has paid off with the reduction in the number of those wanting to travel abroad.
Acknowledging the negative consequencies of illegal migration, Mr. Imasuen said government would be ready to assist the NIS formation in the state within available resources.
Meanwhile, barely seven months after the commencement of issuance of e-passport, authorities of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) say the Service will hit the one million mark by the end of this year.
Comptroller General of the Service, Mr. Chukwurah Udeh who disclosed this to newsmen in Benin City remarked that presently, over 500,000 e-passports had been issued.
The e-passport replaces the machine readable passport which ceases to be valid effective from 2011.
Expressing optimism that the issuance of e-passport in all the 36 states of Nigeria, including Federal Capital Territory, would have started by 2011, he said it had so far commenced in 26 states while trial issuance to Nigerians in the diaspora had commenced in South-Africa.
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