CABOTAGE: NIS Reiterates Commitment With Maritime Agencies On Seafarers Travel Documents

By Roland Ekama

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has reaffirmed commitment to work closely with the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency ( NIMASA) and other maritime agencies to ensure effective monitoring of foreign seafarers and other nationalities across the international frontiers.

Primarily, the service  has also  solicited support from the apex maritime regulatory agency  in a bid to carry out effective issuance travel documents to foreigners and to further curb illegalities on the nation’s territorial waters.

The Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr Idris Isah Jere, who disclosed this on Thursday in Lagos  during a courtesy visit to NIMASA headquarters, pointed out that with the blue border operational areas which cut  across the sea borders, crew examination and control, signing off of embarking and disembarking vessels’ crews are core functions of the service.

According to Jere, the partnership with NIMASA on issuance of travel documents to seafarers will ensure harmonisation for ease of control.

He added that the services would make useful contributions to the maintenance of Blue Border security and national economic prosperity if they joined forces to address emerging challenges across the country’s coastal lines.

The Immigration boss  reiterated that  NIMASA and NIS  robust working relationship , will further  deepen the synergy in their operational activities.

“For us in the NIS, our blue border operational areas cut across the sea borders where we undertake the following activities among others: crew examination and control, signing off of embarking and disembarking vessels’ crews.

“NIMASA, NIS and other critical stakeholders in the maritime sector need a lot of joint operations and collaborations to meaningfully address the violation of our maritime lines and rich natural endowments.

“It is on this note that I considered this visit as very strategic to enable us deepen conversations on how best we can work for a well-regulated and secured maritime territorial integrity.

“Sections 2 and 9 of Immigration Act, 2015, confer the power to issue travel documents on the NIS.

“We think that it is important that as government agencies we need to deepen conversations on how to streamline our processes and procedures to ensure that we do not allow unnecessary duplication or overlap of functions.

“The Ease of Doing Business policy of government demands that agencies of government consistently endeavour to deploy streamlined and seamless processes and procedures for the comfort of the public across various windows,” he said.

“Others are stowaway control, processing of Temporary Work Permit (TWP), handling of passport referral cases, sighting of passport for consignees, granting of transit pass to crew members, granting of shore passes to deserving crews,” he said.

On his part, Director General, NIMASA  Dr Bashir Jamoh, stressed that the service was in the forefront of identification of nationalities, with regards to tribe, to ensure who belonged to Nigeria and other countries.

He pointed out that in essence, both organisations must ensure that they continue to maintain the tempo and the successes recorded.

Jamoh noted that the agency could not have had easy movement of its own seafarers without the help from Immigration Service.

Giving a vivid background, he cited of the Danish citizens that were arrested at sea and how the NIS was able to identify them.

“The Danish Embassy called and said that they didn’t have travel documents of these suspected criminals, how their nationality will be identified because they were arrested outside Nigerian territorial waters but very close to her borders.

“The issue of cooperation, collaboration, coordination and information sharing is vital in whatever they are going to do,” he said.

“The only thing we could do was through the NIS who are the experts trained for this.

This shows the interface and collaboration between the agency and the service, which was more paramount.

“On the issue of crime at sea, those at the correctional centres, it is the immigration service that has custody of those individuals.

“So, technically looking at it, there is nothing that the agency can achieve in terms of maritime security without the help of the immigration service,” he said.