FG

The Federal Government on Tuesday said it will soon establish a centralized verification centre to check cases of immigration and document fraud.

Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo disclosed this in Abuja when he received the United Kingdom UK Minister of State for Home Affairs, David Hanson.

He said; “One of the key issues we also realized with border control is what we call immigration and document fraud. It is very key and we realized that one of the reasons why this is quite on the rise is because there is no centralized pool of authentication and verification of documents in real time.

“So today, if people submit 20 documents, you might need to go to 20 issuing agencies to verify 20 documents belonging to one person. So, if you have 1,000 people per day, you might need to look for 100,000 verification and authentication systems. That breeds inefficiency. And for us, we sincerely believe, and I will not shy away from this fact, and I will say this very clearly, that the unfortunate situation is that the bad reputation of a few is being magnified, is being amplified at the expense of the great reputation of the majority of Nigerians. But we are not blaming anybody for that. We are taking responsibility.

“Nigerians have a responsibility, and as such, as a country,we have decided to be able to create a real-time pool where authentication and verification of all documents, may it be bank statement, may it be passport, may it be birth certificate, may it be any document, just to one centre, where verification will happen.

So we are already working on that because we care about our image, and we care about our relationship and we want to be able to give people the opportunity to know what is right at any time that they wish to know it. It is not just about integration. It also affects investors. If somebody wants to invest in Nigeria, he will want to know who he is dealing with. As a government, we are trying to be more proactive than reactive, and we don’t want to judge our performance in terms of fraud by virtue of recoveries or convictions, but rather by the number of crimes or frauds that we prevented from happening. We want our performance to be based on our preventive measures and not just on our reactive measures. So we are also working on that”, he added.

Earlier, Hanson who led a delegation from the UK Home Office, the National Crime Agency and the UK High Commission in Nigeria, said both countries have to improve performance on criminal justice outcomes.

“There is a great common agenda that we can share and I am particularly keen to look at how we are working together closely. My visit this week will also look at the new Joint Centre that you are undertaking. I will meet with other colleagues in government departments.

“I think it is really important and I know that you visited recently and met with the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper and that there is a willingness and a hope that we can further engage and that you want to organize regional conferences along the lines that we have been trying to do in the United Kingdom to raise some of these criminal justice issues within your sphere of influence here in Nigeria and beyond”, he added.