147 Illegal Immigrants Nabbed In Ondo

Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, in Ondo State Friday paraded 147 persons from Niger and Chad, who entered the state without valid travelling documents.
However, there was a mild drama as two of the illegal immigrants attacked and injured some immigration officers in the process.
Comptroller of NIS, Mr. Adetola Sessi, said in Akure that the illegal immigrants were arrested at the Saabo and Shasha areas of the state capital by officials of the agency.
According to him, “they will be repatriated to their countries of origin immediately because they constitute great security risks, especially when it was discovered that they had no means of livelihood.”
Sessi disclosed that the suspects had been living in the state for a very long time but were fished out of their hideouts following the diligent surveillance of his officials.
”The arrest of the illegal immigrants was in line with the resolve of the incumbent Comptroller-General of the NIS to rid the country of persons who are in the country without valid travelling documents. Most of them entered Nigeria through illegal routes and settled down among our people, creating problems because they had no jobs, no family and no credible means of identity.
”They are ready tools in the hands of self-serving politicians and religious bigots who would want to use them to achieve their parochial, selfish interests.
”Ondo State is peaceful now and we should be careful so that insurgents will not come and recruit these illegal immigrants to carry out their activities,” he said.
”They appeared violent while we were trying to arrest them and some of them even attacked our officers. They beat the officers, injured them and seized their rifles while trying to carry out their constitutional responsibilities.”
The Comptroller however denied that the arrest of the suspects “had nothing to do with the last Sunday attack on the Olokuta Medium Prisons in Akure by some gunmen when 175 prisoners escaped.”