Friday, March 28, 2025 - The Federal Government has expressed serious outrage over an incident where a Chinese expatriate ordered a Nigerian security official guarding him to shoot personnel of the Nigeria Immigration Service NIS who was on legitimate assignment at the premises of the Chinese-owned company.
Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, disclosed this on Thursday
in Abuja at a Stakeholders’ Sensitization Workshop on the Implementation of the
Nigeria Visa Policy 2025.
According to the minister, Nigeria seeks reciprocity in the treatment of
its citizens in other countries, noting that there is no reason to disrespect
any Nigerian who obeys the laws of the host country.
“One issue I must mention is, some of our companies that refuse,
intimidate the Immigration Service from doing its responsibility of
supervision. That will no longer happen.
I will not go to any country, open a company and say Immigration Service
cannot come in. No, I won’t do that. An incident happened and I am taking that
very personally. I don’t want to mention the company here, that shot one of our
immigration personnel. The owner, the people of the company, foreign company,
told the security officer to shoot our officer and he did it. That happened
like a couple of weeks ago. I think it is unjust, right? And we are going to
take it up with the Chinese Embassy. That is a Chinese company. I won’t go to
China and as a Nigerian open a company and tell my security to shoot a
government official in uniform. It is never done anywhere in the world. That
alone is an attack on Nigeria. It will never happen. It will never happen.
These officers put their lives on the line. These officers serve this
country with their all and you will not come from anywhere and ask them to
shoot them in their fatherland. It will no longer happen. We will take it up
with you. It will no longer happen. I can’t imagine it. For a father to leave
the children, go in defence of Nigeria, to do his legitimate responsibility, go
to a company to say, I need to see your expatriates. Let us see your list. Just
to ask questions, and the next thing you say, they should lock the gate.
Because I am here to do the job. This is it. And the next thing you say, if you
don’t do it, I’ll say they should shoot you, and the next thing was that the
Nigerian officer was shot. That is a diplomatic issue. We will handle it.
It will not happen again. So we are going to be very hard. We will not
stop your business. We will not overburden your business. But don’t make us
inferior in our own land. No, please.
And we are going to be very tough on this. Because talking to you, I’m
not just talking with passion. On this topic, I am talking with a lot of anger,
because that guy that was shot is a Nigerian, who we all swore to protect by
virtue of the laws of Nigeria, by the Constitution. That guy that was shot, not
by a terrorist, is a father. That guy shot who was shot, he is a son to
somebody. He is a husband to somebody. That cannot happen anywhere in the
world. We will not tolerate it. Please, no agent, no company is above the law.
We are all under, we are all within the law.
Please, we are doing our best to make things easier. We are doing our
best to collaborate with you, but please, we beg you to not insult us. We will
not disrespect you. As long as the President is President, nobody will
disrespect you in Nigeria.
But all we ask for is reciprocity of respect. That is not too much to
ask for”, he added.
The minister said a Chinese delegation led by the ambassador had earlier
met him to complain that they were being blacklisted, but he said Nigeria was
not blacklisting China.
“And I say it openly here. China is a major trade partner to Nigeria.
And I always say this.
“We will never, under the leadership of His Excellency, we will never
paint an entire street with a single brush. There are Nigerians there. There
are Chinese people here doing fantastically well in our economy. There are
Indians investing billions of dollars in our economy. There are Americans.
There are Europeans, and, of course, just like we have a lot of good Nigerians,
we have some who are questionable. Same with every nation.
“So, we are not going to paint an entire street with a single brush. All
we have said, and I want to repeat this, because we are going to work very hard
in terms of our immigration, is that we will not allow for the abuse of our
immigration protocols. We will not accept that. And as a matter of fact, by 1st
of May, for expatriates in Nigeria and people working in Nigeria, there will be
what we call an expatriate administration system, whereby everybody comes into
that platform.
“And at the end of the
day, we want to be able to know where you are, what you’re doing, and we want
to be accountable for everybody in Nigeria. We will be giving a three-month
window. I call it an asylum window from the 1st of May till the 1st of August
for regularization of immigration protocols in line with our laws.
“After that, we will
move to the era of enforcement, prosecution, and deportation. For anybody who
does not. Because we know today a lot of abuses in terms of our immigration
policies. But before we act, we want to give you the opportunity to act. Anybody
that falls short of that, obviously, has other motives of being in Nigeria. We
want you in Nigeria, but to the extent to which you are ready to obey the laws
of Nigeria”, he declared.
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