The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Oyo State Command, says it has so far registered 4,506 migrants since the commencement of e-migrant registration in the state on Aug. 30.
It would be recalled that the Federal Government had issued a January 2020 deadline for all foreigners in Nigeria to register.
The NIS Comptroller in the state, Saleh Abdullahi, disclosed this on Wednesday in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan.
Abdullahi said the turnout of migrants in the state on a daily basis was highly impressive.
“In fact, we registered 140 migrants per day and we have registered a total of 4,506 migrants so far comprising of 802 regular and 3,704 irregular migrants.
“Regular migrants are those with valid papers to live in Nigeria, that is those with ECOWAS Resident Card or Resident Permit while irregular is those without valid papers to live in Nigeria.
“All regular and irregular migrants must register before Jan. 11, 2020 deadline and anyone that failed to register within this period risk N500,000 fine or three months imprisonment or both,” Abdullahi said.
The state comptroller said that the only challenge faced currently by the command was that it only has one centre throughout the state where the registration is taking place.
Abdullahi said the command in order to register all the migrants in the state before the deadline now closed by 8 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. and sometimes work on Saturday.
“We have Division Immigration Officer (DIO) whose duty is to educate the migrants on the importance of e-migrant registration so that they can come to the state command to register before the deadline.
“We pledged to register all the migrants within this window period,” the comptroller said.