by Adeniyi Abdul

Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service Mrs. Rose Uzoma has quashed about rumours of Boko Haram members being citizens of other countries. Speaking yesterday at a hearing of the House of Representatives joint Committee on Petroleum Upstream and Navy, investigating the “unprecedented upsurge” in crude oil theft yesterday, she stated that such rumours were baseless and the attacks are not the handwork of citizens of neighbouring countries.

“I’m not aware as of today, if any case of foreigner entering this country through the sea ports that have been proved to have been engaged in Boko Haram activities.” she said in response to questions from the committee about the activities of the Immigration Service to stop influx of foreigners who have been linked to Boko Haram. . “Let me use this opportunity please to say this fact, it has become common place that whenever there is an attack, it is usually assumed that the people involved are foreigners.”

“The Nigerian Immigration Service is the only agency statutorily empowered to make public pronouncements on personality of persons. When people see dead bodies on the ground, they say they are illegal immigrants; any attack is attributed to illegal immigrants. I will like to inform you that we have come across on a very few cases of involvement of nationals of neighbouring countries in these incidents.”

“There was a case of a report of 68 Chadians that were arrested who were supposedly involved in the bomb attack in Kano and I have to send my officers to interview the supposed Chadians.” she continued. “It turned out that there was no single Chadian amongst them rather we came across one Malian and a Ghanaian. Those two ECOWAS nationals did not have anything whatsoever to do with the bomb attack,”