Friday, 3 January 2014

Nigerian Immigration To Combat Terrorism With Tricycles (keke Marwa)

The Nigeria Immigration Service has budgeted N166m to purchase tricycles (keke  Marwa) for the patrol of the country’s porous borders as part of strategies to combat terrorism.

The plan to buy the tricycle listed under the code, NIS002000079, was contained in the 2014 budget proposal of the agency with total budget allocation put at N39,302,208,398.

It was described as an ongoing project.

The Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, had announced in March, 2012 that the Federal Government planned to build 84 plazas at the identified legal routes as part of the ways to checkmate activities of criminals and infiltrators.

According to him, the government would introduce the electronic components for the surveillance of the borders with a central post in Abuja or any part of the country that is deemed fit or appropriate.

But this had yet to be done 22 months after and there was no listing for the plazas in the budget.

“We have recently, in conjunction with the national boundaries commission, identified 84 routes travellers to Nigeria use. We are thinking, as a starting point, we must be able to build these plazas in these 84 points.

"We have equally identified 1,497 irregular routes, that is how Herculean the problem of securing these borders is, but daunting as the challenges are, government is equal to the task because it is its primary responsibility to secure the lives and property of its citizens,” he had stated.

The NIS will also spend N685,151,983 to purchase other operational vehicles and another N9,842,825 to procure patrol motorcycles.

The agency plans to spend N72.5m on deportation and repatriation of illegal aliens.

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