The assistant superintendent of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Danladi Wosha, has disclosed that 90 per cent Nigerians deported from aboard are from Edo State with a promise that the NIS will intensify awareness and sensitization to various communities to educate the grassroots people about the dangers of illegal smuggling and migration.
Wosha who made the disclosures at a sensitization programmeorganized Benin City by the Nigeria Immigration Service with theme:” No Japa Enter Smuggler Hand: Shine Your Eye,” said the end purpose of smuggling is for financial and material gains.
He stated that smuggling of migrant comes with the consent of the migrants, unlike the human trafficking where the traffickers are usually the people looking for victims to be trafficked aboard.
He added that smuggling of victims is often carried out by transnationals, while human trafficking occurs both locally and internationally.
Delivering a lecture on, “Understanding the SOP on SOM,” Danladi Wosha, said smuggling is a crime against the state. He explained that smugglers benefit more in the business because of the high fees they charge and other material gains they get from the victims.
He said smuggling of migrants is an organized crime against the authority noting that other participants in the crime are the coordinators/organizers, the informants and spotters, safe home operators, guides of victims, the transporters and unauthorized passport producers.
In his welcome address, the controller of Immigration Service, Edo State Command, CIS, Rabi Garp, said the sensitization was timely as information dissemination has become the better and most viable tool to help stem the ugly menace of Smuggling of Migrants (SOMs).
He stressed that facts are power which, the programme is intended to achieve.
“I welcome you all to this sensitization/enlightenment programme on Smuggling of Migrants (SOM), for Nigeria Immigration Service Officers, Border Management Agencies and the general public in collaboration with the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD).
“This forum is therefore designed to sensitize, enlighten and educate the public on the dangers associated with Smuggling of Migrants (SOM) that is gaining prominence in recent times. This has to stop”.
In his goodwill messages, the commander, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Edo State, Dan Oko, said the security agency is ready to partner and collaborate with the NIS to ensure smuggling of migrants is critically reduced in the state and Nigeria in general.
Dan Oko further stated that he had gained knowledge on how smugglers deceive their victims by collecting money from them and selling them to other smugglers for profit purpose, the agency and urged all the participants to go to their various homes, communities and villages and spread the information to those who did not attend stressing that many people are suffering today as a result of lack of ignorance.
Also, the Head of Service (HoS) in Oredo Local Government Area, Comrade Kensington Osifo, said the council is ready to work with the NIS and related agencies to fight against illegal smuggling in the state. He thanked the NIS and the Edo State government for establishing the Edo State Task Force headedcbyProf. Yinka Omorogbe, former state commissioner for Justice and attorney general.
The assistant controller general coordinating Zone G, Dominic Obetta Asogwu, while giving the closing remark, appealed to all the participants to take the message to the grassroots. He said, the vulnerable people who need the information are living in their various communities, and urged everybody to spread the facts in their localities.
ACG Obetta Asogwu also said more than 90 per cent of the victims illegally smuggled out of the country, are from Edo State. He stressed that the fight against illegal migration or smuggling requires a continuous collective process to end the problem. He narrated that when he was in charge at SemeBorder, he observed that the majority of the migrant victims from other nations were mainly from Edo State.
He thanked the Edo State government for its efforts to set up an agency saddled with the duty to rehabilitate and reintegrate the migrant victims back to the society through training and capacity building for them to become self-reliant.
Some migrant victims narrated their bad ordeals during their journey through desert land to Europe and other countries.
