The Nigerian Immigration Service, Murtala Mohammed International Airport Command, Lagos will frustrate all efforts by syndicates and networks to smuggle migrants through the airport.
The Comptroller, Adeola Adesokan, spoke at a two-day sensitisation programme against smuggling of migrants.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the event, holding in Lagos, had the theme: “Saying No to Migrants Smuggling is our Collective Responsibility.”
According to Adesokan, who spoke at the opening ceremony on Thursday, smuggling of migrants is a monster that should not be ignored.
She said that tales of smuggling of migrants and its consequences had been horrific.
She said: “These terrible narratives should never be part of the story of human race.
“My current assignment at MMIA brought me face-to-face with realities on smuggling of migrants.
“These are realities one would prefer not to see or imagine.”
According to the Comptroller, migrants smuggling exposed Nigeria’s young women and men to modern-day sexual slavery, exploitation, hard drugs and abusive labour.
“Migrants smuggling has near-to-death experience of rescued stowaways as on high seas, with valuable property being sold to pay monsters referred to as traffickers,” she said.
Adesokan added that the country had been losing youths, especially females, to smuggling.
“They were manipulated and lured into avoidable hardship,” she said.
She said that the command would increase its campaigns, summon all techniques against smuggling of migrants and ensure the route would be miserable for miscreants and traffickers.
Adesokan said that 2,057 smuggled migrants had been deported through MMIA since the beginning of 2022.
“During the same period, 143 males and 38 females were refused departure due to non-compliance with travelling procedures,” she said.
NAN reports that NIS, in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, on September 14, 2022 unveiled the Observatory Report on Smuggling of Migrants.
The report aims at unravelling the dynamics of smuggling of migrants activities through and to Nigeria, between 2019 and 2021,
At the event, an Assistant Comptroller-General of Immigration Service, E. N. Esekaigbe, who is in charge of NIS Migration Directorate, Abuja, charged all anti-migrants smuggling stakeholders to do more to combat the menace smuggling.
Esekaigbe, who was represented by a Chief Superintendent of Immigration, Emmanuel Imakhai, said the scourge affected the socio-political well-being of the country.
“The migration directorate of NIS, in collaboration with some development partners, between September 13 and November 16, had sensitised 17, 611 participants through 816 NIS officers and 11 stakeholder groups,” Esekaigbe said.
A survivor and returnee from Libya, Gloria Jonathan, urged the Federal Government to provide employments for youths to prevent them from being prey to traffickers.
