The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Isah Jere Idris, has charged its officials to get ready to “move to the borders.”
The CG said this at the Ikoyi Passport Office in Lagos where he was on a working visit on Thursday.
He insisted the “main job” of the NIS is “migration management.”
He also said the service was getting ready for mass deployment of its officials to the borders in order to guard against the infiltration of foreigners into the country.
“Our borders are open, they are porous. Elections are around the corner so we are doing mass deployment to the borders so that we’ll take charge of our country.
“We are not going to joke with our borders, so there will be deployment very soon.”
Speaking on international passport issuance, he noted that there are “more than 100,000 uncollected passports nationwide.”
He also refuted claims that the Service doesn’t have enough booklets to print passports.
“Nigerians continue to complain that we don’t have booklets. We have booklets; if we don’t have, how come we have uncollected passports? In fact, we have enough booklets,” he said.
He added that the backlog of requests for passports caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has been cleared.
