11,000 migrants registered in Ogun

The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Ogun State Command, said it has registered 11,000 immigrants since the e-immigration exercise began in August.

It said it had been able to register over 11,000 migrants, adding that its target was 20,000 before the January 11, 2020 amnesty period.

Controller of the command, NIS, Doris Braimah, disclosed this in Abeokuta when she hosted a delegation from Ghana High Commission in her office.

She said that the command was working round the clock to meet the deadline.

Her words, “So far, we’ve registered over 11,000 migrants in this command and we are still registering. Averagely in a day, we do over 100 and we work even weekends to ensure that we meet the deadline.

“We are hoping that before the end of the registration amnesty period that we should be able to have close to 20,000 migrants registered. The exercise would come to an end on January 11, 2020.”

Braimah noted that the major reason the command was breaking new grounds in the state was as a result of the support it got from the state government.

According to her, Governor Dapo Abiodun has been very supportive.

“We have recorded success in the state because our command has a very supportive chief executive officer in the person of Dapo Abiodun.

“As far as this Migrant E-registration exercise is concerned, he has given everything possible to ensure that we succeed. I will not leave out my controller general who is the master planner of this project,” she said.

The command, she added, had been able to register over 500 Ghanaian residents in the state, insisting that only migrants resident in the state would be registered.

In his response, the Consul-General, Ghana High Commission, James Nyasembi, asked for an extension for some of its people who might not be able to meet the e-immigrants registration deadline going on in the country.

He commended the Federal Government for deeming it fit to include foreign nationals residing in the country in its planning process.

“We also want to state at this point that we have a large number of Ghanaian population in Nigeria across the federation. We don’t have the real estimate, but we think we have about 700,000 Ghanaians residing here,” he said.

Nyasembi said that his visit was a follow-up to the e-immigration exercise that commenced about five months ago.

He added that the embassy in Nigeria had embarked on educating Ghanaians residing in the country on the need to key into the programme.

He assured that all Ghanaians without valid means of identification residing in the country would be issued new identity cards to fast track the process.