It’s our collective responsibility to win peace in North-East, says Dambazau

Lieutenant General Abdulrahman Dambazau (retd.), Minister of Interior, on Friday said it was the responsibility of every Nigerian, including the security agencies, to win the peace in the North-East.

Lieutenant General Abdulrahman Dambazau (retd.)

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Dambazau spoke during a tour of the facilities of the Nigerian Immigration Service at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Lagos.

The minister said the Federal Government was not only interested in winning the war against the Boko Haram sect but was more concerned about bringing lasting peace to the area.

According to him, for Nigeria to win the peace in the North-East, all the country’s land, sea and air borders must be well-secured, especially by Immigration personnel.

“We all have the responsibility to win the peace in the North-East. One aspect is to win the war, but we need to win the peace in that part of the country too.

” To do this, we have to secure the borders to prevent people from interfering in the peace we have at the moment.

“As we all know, all the weapons that are circulating through Nigeria come through the borders and the immigration is in charge of all the borders we have in this country.

“We have designed a programme to visit the borders in the North- East and there is a strategy to ensure that this lasts.

“We also want to introduce some certain technologies that would aid the immigration’s work,” he said.

Dambazau urged the officers to maintain professionalism and integrity in the discharge of their duties, stressing that the President Muhammed Buhari-led administration had zero-tolerance for corruption.

Speaking earlier, the Comptroller of Immigration, MMIA Command, Mrs Chizoba Dibi, disclosed that the command processed a total of 1,097,250 arrivals and 1,239,969 departures in 2015.

Dibi said 4,939 Nigerians were deported in 2015 while five foreigners were repatriated by the command during the period under review.

According to her, the command generated $1,019,828 last year, while airlines operating in the country owed the immigration service $1,302,000.

“I believe that if we receive the approval of the ministry to withdraw our services to these airlines, the debtor airlines will pay their debts to the command,” she said. (NAN)