The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has reassured Nigerians of its capacity to prevent foreigners from participating in the nation’s electoral process.
In a statement on Tuesday, spokesman of the agency, Mr Sunday James, said Immigration personnel were fully on ground monitoring the political process to ensure non-Nigerians did not get involved.
James said the assurance was in response to speculation in some quarters that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was registering foreigners ahead of the 2019 elections.
Dismissing the rumour, he stated that the NIS was in good working relationship with INEC and all other data gathering agencies to ensure that only Nigerians got enrolled into the nation’s database.
He said, “It is important to state that as parts of its statutory role of migrant control in Nigeria, the NIS ensures that no foreigner participates in our electoral process.
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“The agency does this by deploying personnel to monitor the political process with a view to ensuring that no migrant gets involved in our politics.
“It is also customary with the NIS to embark on sensitisation campaigns to bar non-Nigerians from participating in such exercise.
“It is also worthy of note that NIS maintains a good working relationship with INEC and all data harvesting agencies to ensure that persons, especially foreigners, who are not supposed to be enrolled do not get into the nation’s database.”
He urged any person with sufficient reasons to suspect any non-Nigerian participating in the nation’s politics to alert NIS through: nis.servicom@nigeriaimmigration.gov.ng, bimmigrationspro@gmail.com or call +234(0)7080607900.