The Nigerian Immigration, Abia State Command, has repatriated some illegal immigrants to their country of origin after a thorough search revealed that they had no valid papers.
According to the State Comptroller of Immigration, Umuahia, Anthonia Opara, most of the illegal immigrants are citizens of Niger Republic who entered the country illegally through the borders.
She warned that the command was on the red alert to comb the entire cranny of Abia State to fish them out and promised that the repatriation would be a continuous exercise.
Some of these illegal immigrants were arrested from the cattle market at Lokpanta in Umunneochi Local Government Area, others from Umuahia, Aba North Local Government, Ohafia, and they could speak the English language except their indigenous language and a bit of Hausa which the bilingual officers of immigration helped to interpret during interviews with them.
One after the other, as their names were called out, they were searched properly before entering the buses ready to take them back to their country.
With the spate of insecurity and insurgency wrecking the country, the need to be more careful and take close awareness of whom the country’s neighbours are could have necessitated the move and the action taken by the Nigerian Immigration to clamp down on the illegal immigrants who were about 70 in number and were caught wandering about or doing menial jobs without valid paper of identification or ECOWAS Permit.
The immigration said that it had lined up another strategy to combat this crime as they were set to discuss with the traditional rulers and indigenes of border communities on the need to report any questionable unidentified persons within their domains.
