‘Expatriate Quota Abuse Is Criminal’

The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) is the Federal Agency charged with the responsibility of regulating immigration into the country. As a result, she has offices in all the 36 states of the federation including Abuja.

 Beyond fighting illegal immigrants, the agency also takes charge of issuance of Passports to numerous Nigerians who travel out of the country and in addition, issues residence permit to aliens.

 These and other unfamiliar activities of NIS were subjects of discussion when The Tide Editorial Board had an encounter with the Comptroller, Nigeria Immigration Service, Rivers State Command, Dr Brosca Emmanuel Ifeadi, on Monday last week.

 Here are the excerpts. Read on.

  Please may we know you, tell the world who you are?

 I’m Dr Brosca Emmanuel Udechukwu Ifeadi, the incumbent Comptroller of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Rivers State Command.  I was Special Assistant to Comptroller-General upto 2006, before I was posted here as the Comptroller.  I am from Delta State. Of course, that is another part of the Niger Delta, the South-South for that matter.

  What about your early life?

 I started my primary school in different areas because of the nature of my father’s job.  He was a pastor in the Anglican Church and I grew up with the Anglican doctrine.  My father, retired as the Provost of the Cathedral in Asaba, Asaba Diocese. I grew up in the Northern part of the country throughout my primary education, but during the impasse in 1966, I had to come back. So I left the North with my foster mother and thereafter moved back with her again in 1967 in Owelena where I completed my primary school. Later, I moved to Sabankta-Ora, Holy Trinity Grammar School, Sabongari where I finished my School Certificate.  And thereafter I went to Saint Patrick’s, Asaba where I did my Higher School Certificate (HSC). In 1978, I entered the University of Lagos where I studied for my first degree in Political Science, got job in 1983 in NIS, where I served under different capacities.

 While in service in 1983 I began a Masters degree programme in Political Science at the University of Lagos and I successfully rounded up in 1985.

 After 19 years in service I began to feel intellectually bankrupt, then I was in Edo command. There is no need mentioning the states I had worked, but I want to say that this is my eleventh State where I have worked. When I was in Edo command where I was heading the Investigation Section, I applied for a Ph.D admission but I was told that my Masters degree had become obsolete because of a long period of 19 years. So I was told to do an M.Phil (Master of Philosophy) to qualify me for the programme. So I did my M.Phil then applied for a Ph.D in Strategic Studies. It is natural that when you finish your M.Phil is a continuous process you can do your Ph.D. I did my M.Phil at the University of Benin, and the chairman of the examining body, Prof Igbikiye said that he liked my work. I was one of those that wrote on foreign policy and he told me to do a Ph.D in Strategic Studies whereas I already have an M.Phil in International Relations. So that was how I applied, initially I thought it was a joke but as I left him that thought sowed a seed in me that began to disturb me. So I applied for a Ph.D in Strategic Studies in Ambrose Ali University, and was taken. I was also given a letter of commendation in the service for being able to combine two Ph.D programmes at the same time, and being the Special Assistant to the Comptroller-General where you have to do a lot of writing..

  You have served in 10 other States, what have been the major challenges in Rivers State as compared to others?

 I will state very clearly, that the challenges are functions of the militancy that we experienced here.  All the places I have worked, I have never worked in a place where it looked as if Nigeria was under siege.  My work here in Rivers State was difficult because I worked under serious  tension in order to cope with the menace of militancy; expatriates submitted applications that they wanted to go back home.

 Having to cope with that mainly, to write to the authorities about the kidnapping of people and possibly a quick analysis through our own data base, to know where the person is from, where he worked, from our own immigration perspective that will guide other security agencies in terms of profiling the victim(s). It was not easy at all.

  How were you able to cope with this?

 I feel that the present Governor, Rt Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi’s attitude to fight militancy helped, because we have seen a leader who is prepared to fight this militancy head-long and we were trained also to face things in that order.

  Are you saying that within the three years and some fractions, there was never a moment you thought of leaving Rivers State?

 No.  I must tell you the gospel truth, anybody who knows me, knows I am a fighter, I am a Black Belt in karate, I did not tell you that I belong to Marshal-Art since 1978 at the University of Lagos and became a Black Belt as far back in 1988. Without that critical thought of an assault by somebody, the crisis scenario, you would not succeed. So somebody of my own texture, with my pedigree, I believe in fighting to the end to ensure that at the bottom line we succeed.  And the fight was against militancy as the major perspective and other things actually messing up the society.  I just have to keep to it, and that is why you can know that I am one of the youngest comptrollers to be sent here straight from the office of the Comptroller-General to ensure that we put in our best.

  You talked about militancy, how were you able to differentiate between them and those infiltrators because we heard of some blacks who are from some neighbouring countries who came in and became part of the militancy?

 The present Comptroller-General has made it easier for us because virtually every aspect of the operations is “e-based”. We have a central data for foreigners, who are expatriates.  Most of the whites are from America, Lebanon and some other countries. They come into Nigeria, so for them to acquire the Nigeria residence permit they have to pass through all the security checks and through that process anybody is identified, as all particulars will be inside the computer. The blacks who are of African extraction for example, that group is not difficult, because I can even stand here to tell you that we have a good record of all of them and that one is a major problem that Nigeria  is trying to solve; and that is why the present Comptroller-General has said that we are sovereign to our border and gave an order that from March, 2010, we will start a census of all non-Nigerians who are of African extraction because we recognise this problem you are talking about.

 As far as the blacks are concerned, based on our training, it will be easy for you to know that this person is from Togo, this person is from Ghana, because of their accent and, their behaviour. In fact, if you bring any Ghanaian as soon as he appears I will tell you he is a Ghanaian no matter how he claims to be a Nigerian. Similarly, a good Immigration Officer who is trained in other African countries will identify a Nigerian.

 I am not trying to negate being a Nigerian but what I am trying to say is that there are certain tricks that will make you know that this is a Nigerian, so in the same way we have been using our knowledge gained in training to know that this person is from so-so African country and all that. But unfortunately if you look at Port Harcourt for example, now you will see that we have a lot of illegal immigrants who are black and because of behavioural contiguity with some of the groups in Nigeria, it becomes very difficult and very tasking.

 If you go to Badagry border, you see that there are some of the towns merged because of the fact that the colonialists had to merge us together by force. You see that these are brothers of the same communities that they just separated, you will be surprised to note in some of the communities in Ogun State that in somebody’s bedroom you have a pillar of boundary between Nigeria and Benin Republic. And in another person’s compound and right in the kitchen is where you have the pillar of a boundary, it is so unfortunate.

 In the Northern side we have a bigger problem where you have Hausas and Fulanis in Niger, you have them in Chad, you have them in Mali, you have them in all the areas even in Bukina-Faso, in fact in all the countries that have boundaries with us. So when you have Northerners for example, all of them will come in as Hausas, how do you know the difference? It takes real knowledge. There are some of our Northerners who we will now co-opt, we will arrange for them to talk to them to be able to know that this one is telling a lie, is not a Nigerian. But you can see that it gives room for human failure. Human mistakes like the last operation we had before the end of last year.

 We arrested one hundred and thirty-nine (139) illegal immigrants. Out of the 139, 95 were from Niger Republic, 5 were from Chad, one from Bukina-Faso, one from Mali, then the rest were Nigerians. How did we have to differentiate? So we have to critically try to find out, and without the help of the Rivers State government, we would not have had the responses with which we kicked them out of the country immediately.

 Even within a timeframe we were in a hurry because while you keep them you must feed them, because Human Rights Organisations will now be after us, in fact there will be complaints also from the Niger Republic Embassy, from that of Chad that they were not well fed, that when they want to pray we do not allow them to pray at the appropriate time. You see these are people under arrest, they have the support from the Embassies to begin to challenge you about everything. And without the help of some genuine Rivers State people we would not have been able to catch all of them, because when the officers landed, people from Rivers State assisted them to catch the illegal aliens.

 Now the issue is that having done that, have you done all? They are still too many, how do you do all that? That is why the government says that this issue of illegal immigrants is an on-going affair, we have done that already, we still have to keep arresting, easing them out so that they do not fall into the classification of deportees, because the issue of deportation is a different issue when you come to immigration. The government through the Immigration spokesman said that from March this year, there will be the launching in Abuja where all known African immigrants will be registered and counted. Easing them out will be an on-going affair.

 So this counting will now give us an insight into who is who. Apart from the fact that we have a data base we are also going round to know about other blacks who are Africans.

  You said there is going to be a kind of registration exercise. Is it going to be a registration of illegal immigrants?

 Yes! Immigration is responsible in the process of fishing out those who are illegal immigrants. We will register them so that we will be able to know and have a statistics of whom they are, where they come from and be able to say okay, at so and so location this local government in Rivers State we have so and so number of illegal immigrants.

  Where will it start?

 It will be kicked off in Abuja, immediately after that, all the states will begin to launch their own and a letter has been written to the Governor already, notifying him that he will flag off our own here by the Grace of God.

  Let us look at another scenario where so many companies violate the immigration laws.

 I must thank you for bringing up this issue because something happened on previous Saturday, while I was training my Karate students. A good Samaritan called me and said there were lapses in Immigration in our area that had to do with this issue about expatriates and expatriates quota with foreign elements who abuse it and that immigration is not doing anything. So I quickly called the Public Relations Officer to go to the Radio Station and tell them that some of the things they said were not right. And he said the person who made these statements did so without having proofs about what he said. He said that immigration was invited for that programme and we refused to come. It was too bad, we were not invited.

 So going back to the question, now expatriate quota abuse is one criminal thing that Immigration does not toy with. As a matter of fact, we always tell the public if you have an idea, you have the knowledge or information to that effect of any organisation where you are sure that an expatriate is working illegally, come physically to the Immigration Office and inform us. If you cannot come to me directly, you go to the Investigation Section and let us know, we will take it seriously. Now, Immigration in every state has an Investigation Unit. They also have their own Aliens Unit that goes out regularly to check these abuses. Apart from every state, the Immigration Headman in Abuja also has the Directorate of Investigation Unit of which all these State Commands work under even if all of us are working under the Comptroller-General of Immigration Service that had to do with monitoring and investigating any new case of such issue.

 The Alien Office goes round to check the same thing with the Investigation Section, but any known case of an abuse is handled by the Investigation Section. And we go to check whenever an incident occurs. Right now as I speak to you the Investigation Section is right in this company they call Indorama. They are there now, there is one other company I would not remember now. I said they should wait until they get the management to perform their duty without bias.