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The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) has disclosed its plans to procure aircraft, including helicopters and drones, to fortify the country's border security and management.
This was made known by the Acting Comptroller-General of the service, Caroline Adepoju, who spoke at a retreat organised by the NIS, Murtala Muhammed International Airport Command, Lagos State, on Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
According to the NIS boss, acquiring surveillance equipment like drones and helicopters is pertinent to monitoring the movement of people and items along the nation's sprawling borders.
While recalling that the NIS had, at some point, its own aircraft for surveillance, Adepoju revealed that the service was working to return to that era.
She said we will “ensure that NIS gets its aircraft back. We used to have aircraft for border surveillance. We are now putting this into our budget.
“We are going to buy aircraft, we will buy drones. We are going to buy helicopters to ensure that we effectively do aerial border management.”
Speaking further, Adepoju said plans are in the works to ensure that by 2024, the NIS will be able to deploy electronic gates to ease the passage of citizens through the air, land, and sea borders.
The NIS boss said the proposed e-gate would bear a biometric identity verification system that will make travellers’ experience across all national borders seamless, thereby minimising the need for direct interaction with immigration officers.
“Very soon, NIS will be deploying the e-gate to make it seamless for our nationals to come in, make it less stressful.
“In the early part of 2024, we will deploy the e-gate, ensuring that our MIDAS will improve on them, ensuring our borders, air, land and sea are fortified.
“The electronic gate, for example, our nationals may not need, except they are persons of interest, to be attended to by immigration officers,“ she added.