The Federal Government recently promised to upgrade our border posts with a view to checkmating activities of illegal aliens into the country. The pronouncement came on the heels of serious agitations and complaints about the porosity of our borders and the threats it poses to the security of the nation coupled with on-going massacre of innocent Nigerians by the dreaded Moslem fundamentalists, Boko Haram.
In this interview with Crime Editor, Emma Nnadozie, the Public Relations Officer of Nigeria Immigration Service, JOACHIM OLUMBA, an Assistant Comptroller of Immigration, bares his mind on the challenges the prevailing situation poses to them and the way forward.
Boko Haram and inadequacies of border control
I would like to correct an erroneous impression here. This has to do with insinuations that Boko Haram is a phenomenon created and propelled by external forces. To many, the activities of the group are inspired and perpetrated by non-Nigerians. This is to say the least, a mere fallacy. I have always maintained that we have over-exaggerated the extent of foreign involvement in most of the security challenges bedeviling the country.
Boko Haram and some other trans-border crimes constitute a proportion of criminal activities prevalent in Nigeria. One must not forget the fact that before the group’s violent attacks, we had local militia which terrorized different parts of the country, including the Niger Delta Militants and OPC. What is totally strange in what we are witnessing today is the suicide attacks by the group.
It is also wrong to pretend that Nigerians cannot engage in suicide bombings. At least, the Boko Haram is proving this to be correct. A very close look at the utterances and modus operandi of the Boko Haram clearly shows that members of the group are largely Nigerians. The record of arrests made so far also buttresses this assertion. The decent vehicles they use for their deadly operations may also be a pointer to the fact that the group is receiving robust sponsorship from well- placed people.
Boko Haram may more or less be a creation of our local political environment. You will recall that the group intensified their violent attacks ever since the last general elections. A lot of Nigerians misconstrue the group’s assertion that their men who had been trained in Somalia were being expected in the country to mean that they engaged foreign insurgents.
On the other hand, it is not totally out of place to link the high level of insecurity in the country to the state of our borders. This is so because the weapons used in the prosecution of most violent crimes in the country are imported.
Given this fact, we might ask: where are border security agencies when these weapons are being brought into the country? Some foreigners are also believed to be involved in the perpetration of some trans-border crimes hence, one might be compelled to seek to know where immigration officers are when these people enter the country.
The answer is very simple. The fact remains that our borders are extremely porous. Most times, when we talk about the porous nature of our borders, most people presume that this is the making of our border security operatives. Some even accuse them of being corrupt and conclude that this is the primary cause of the high rate of trans-border crimes. These are all misconceptions. Our borders are basically porous because they are not only vast but contiguous and without demarcations.
The greater proportion is unmanned, giving criminally-minded people the opportunity to enter or leave the country with minimal difficulty. When we say our borders are porous, it does not mean that our security agencies are not policing our borders the way they are expected to do. Rather, what this means is that our borders are in a very difficult shape to man.
In fact, with all sense of modesty, one could say that immigration officers have performed considerably well the arduous task of policing our vast, porous and contiguous borders. Any fellow who is quite conversant with the nature of our borders will easily accede to the fact that officers and men of the Service have done fairly well given the enormity of challenges confronting them.
The point here is that the borders are vast, contiguous, non-delineated with inadequate manpower to police them. The rate of trans-border crimes would have been worse if not for the commitment and sacrifice of security operatives at our borders, especially Immigration Officers and men.
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