The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has embarked on a cross-border roadshow to sensitise people in West African coasts on the ECOWAS National Biometric Identity Card (ENBIC).
Mohammed said the card, which replaced ECOWAS Travel Certificate, would also assist member countries to share information and enhance data collection.
“Once you have the card, all the features in international passports are embedded in it. At the border point, the official only swipes it, and all information about the traveller is revealed,” he said.
He advised transporters against carrying passengers without necessary travel documents, assuring them that all their complaints about harassment and extortion by security officials along Lagos-Seme route would be looked into.
The Director General of NAPTIP, Julie Okah-Donle, said transporters were major players in the movement of victims and traffickers, appealing to them to join hands with the agency to fight traffickers.
She urged the transporters to always sensitise travellers on the danger of being trafficked, urging them to alert the agency immediately they suspected some people were being trafficked.
Responding, the transporters commended the organisers for the programme, stressing that if the card could be used without any hitch in Nigeria, such card would be used elsewhere without problem.
The transporters, however, lamented the ill-treatment they received from Nigerian security agencies, including the police, NDLEA and Immigration Service whom they claimed always extort them.
“In Nigerian border, there are too many security agencies at the border; drivers spend between N9, 000 and N10, 000 before crossing the border. We spend almost all our earnings on paying bribes at all these check points.
“We appeal to ECOWAS representatives to use your offices and authority to bring sanity to our road. Reduce the number of these checkpoints on Seme road,“ one of the transporters said during the interactive session.
The Togolese Ambassador to Nigeria, Mrs. Paulette Adejovi-Yekpe, called on the transporters to check passengers’ information before carrying them, noting that every month, she always returned some of her citizens trafficked to Nigeria back to Togo.
She warned ECOWAS citizens against false religious leaders, who were trafficking persons in the name of God.
MM/GIK/APA