By Oludamisi Ojo.
Officials of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Ekiti State Command, have arrested a suspect (names withheld) for alleged trafficking of eight children for child labour.
The NIS Comptroller, Ekiti State Command, Mr Alphonsus Achilonu, revealed this in Ado Ekiti on Thursday, during a weeklong customer service ceremony to interact with the public to check corruption and for improved service delivery.
Achilonu said through tip-off and intelligence gathering, that his anti-human trafficking squad swooped on the suspect, intercepted his car and arrested him in Ado Ekiti while transporting the victims from Benue to end-users in Lagos and Ibadan axis.
According to him, “Our Anti-human trafficking is patrolling and based intelligence gathering arrested one man while trafficking the eight children, who are majorly minors to their end-users. He confessed that he brought the children from Benue State.
“The eight victims had been reunited with their families. Many people are in the business who just have to be checked at all costs and the best approach is for the government, parents and all well-meaning Nigerians to ensure that they are sincere with the provision of basic needs for these children, put them in schools, create enabling environment and provide jobs for them.
“We shouldn’t pay lip service to it. Government should come up with stringent laws and policies to curtail traffickers. Some of them were fond of using commercial drivers as delivering agents of these innocent children to their end-users”.
He explained that what they normally do to whoever they arrest is to investigate properly, gather evidence and hand over the person to the NAPTIP office in Osogbo for diligent prosecution.
On the customer service week with the theme: “Excellent Service Delivery, a Panacea for Corruption” , Achilonu said the programme was targeted at broadening the knowledge of the citizens about the NIS roles and activities.
He said “This is a customer care programme where we interact with the public and measure how well we are performing our duties. It will feature monitoring and evaluation exercises and capacity building workshop.
“We distribute questionnaires to the public to know how we are performing in the issuance of passports, fighting child trafficking, we also educate them on how to avoid meeting touts while trying to deal with us.
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” Don’t forget that Some used to have a negative impression about NIS when they meet the wrong persons and they were either duped or extorted. This programme will unveil the way the public feels about our operations”
The Comptroller noted that three are other responsibilities that people were not aware of apart from issuance of passports saying” We patrol borders and we also have a rapid response squad to back up police, DSS and other security agencies while performing very sensitive operations.
“Our operatives in conjunction with NSCDC and correctional centre officers are now working together to curtail jailbreak based on the directive of the Minister of Interior. We also have an anti-corruption unit that fights extortion of the members of the public, because we don’t condone indiscipline”.
A Deputy Comptroller of Immigration and the Command’s Passport Control Officer, Mr Ibukun Togun, hailed the Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr Idris Isa Jere, on behalf of the Command, for organising such a public-oriented programme.
