No fewer than 1,497 illegal routes are being exploited by immigrants to come into the country illegally, the Minister of Interior, Comrade Abba Moro has disclosed.
According to him, the illegal routes were recently discovered sequel to government’s renewed effort to fight trans- border crimes.
Fielding questions from correspondents at the State House, the Minister also announced that his ministry would soon build 84 border plazas within Nigerian territories.
To achieve effective policing of the borders, Moro said the Ministry of Interior will partner with Galaxy Backbone and the National Identification Commission to ensure adequate data capture of all persons that enter and leave the country as well as those who are resident here.
“We have recently in conjunction with the national boundaries commission identify 84 routes which travellers to Nigeria use. We are thinking as a starting point we must be able to build these plazas in these 84 points.
“We have equally identified 1,497 irregular routes that is how Herculean the problem of securing these borders are but daunting as the challenges are, government is equal to the task because is the primary responsibility to secure the lives and properties of it’s citizens.
“At the moment, we are at the drawing board so without prejudice to when this issue will come to the federal executive council, costing them for example, most of our plazas Seme border for instance is located in Republic of Benin and so enforcement becomes a problem.
“For instance, if there is a bridge of our law in Seme border, we will be unable to enforce Nigerian laws because that part of land is in the Republic of Benin. So we are thinking of placing our plazas in our territories so we can tackle any bridge”, the Minister said.
Comrade Moro reiterated government’s concern over the security challenge confronting the country, assuring that it was particularly addressing the issue of illegal immigrants coming into the country to cause trouble.
He spoke further, “there is no doubt that in any country foreigners come in there is no exception to that except that when criminally minded foreigners come into the country with illegitimate papers, without proper travel documents it becomes a concern to government.
“More so, when these foreigners are alleged to be part of the problem of insecurity by participating in some of the suicide bombings and some of the conflicts that we have on our hands, certainly it is a serious concern for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“It is as a result of this concern that the federal government has started to increase attention to addressing this border porosity. It is our hope that this will address this border porosity in the country as presently it is the problem”.
He also disclosed that the federal government was considering introducing the electronic components border surveillance with a central post in Abuja or any part of the country that.
“I hope that the combination of the system of surveillance with the human component of surveillance we should be able to drastically reduce if not completely eliminate border infiltration”, the Minister expressed optimism.