Over 1,000 PVCs Were Recovered In Kaduna After 516 Illegal Immigrants Were Arrested
The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) has detained 516 illegal immigrants in Kaduna State in advance of the general elections in 2023.
They were detained by immigration officers in the State’s Zaria region during a mop-up operation.
Liman Sani Kila, the state immigration controller for Kaduna State, told reporters that the illegal immigrants from Chad, Niger, and Togo were detained as a result of actionable intelligence.
He also said that the Service had earlier this year, during a sting operation in several areas of Kaduna city, seized more than a thousand Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) from illegal immigrants.
“Most of them, like 65 percent of them, come from the Niger Republic,” he claimed. Next are Chad, Cameroon, and Togo. The electoral legislation prohibits non-Nigerians from possessing PVCs. Voter ID cards are only for Nigerian citizens. You have broken the law if you have a Permanent Voter Card but are not a citizen of Nigeria. You must be detained and then released slowly. They have been profiled, and we’ll check to see whether any of them still have PVCs on hand.
They will be properly profiled, then deported to their countries of origin, according to the NIS Controller.
He reaffirmed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Nigerian Immigration Service are collaborating closely to guarantee that no foreign person participates in the upcoming elections.
“We collaborate closely. INEC is an electoral body that participates in the national election process. And only Nigerians participated in the process. Similarly, Immigration as a Service manages foreign nationals’ entry and exit from the nation, and it is illegal for foreigners to vote in Nigerian elections according to the law. Thus, the synergy exists. We collaborate closely with INEC, he said.
