The Federal Government says it will soon set 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.