NIS boss charges truck owners to create employment for Nigerian drivers

Tayo Oladipupo

As a means of creating employment opportunities for Nigerians, the Controller of immigration in charge of Seme border Area command, Mr. Dominic Obetta Asogwa has called on the Nigerian truck owners to always engage Nigerians as their drivers to drive their trucks.

He added that the decision would also lead to reduction in crime rate in the trucking industry in Nigeria.

The Controller made the call when the leadership of the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders Nigeria (AREFFN) paid him a courtesy visit in his office at Seme.

He decried the attitude of Nigerians who go on their way to engage foreigners especially from Benin Republic and Togo to drive their trucks saying that the trend if allowed to persist would lead to job loss in the country.

His words, “Some of your drivers that drive your trucks are from Benin Republic. Why not employ Nigerians as your drivers because as you are employing Nigerians as your drivers, you are creating employment. You people prefer to use Benin citizens to do this work. Although people complained about the nonchalant attitude of Nigerian drivers but I said, we all have to do it together, it is not one person, we have to talk to them. If you think that they are running away with your trucks and they are not doing well, then you come up with a better strategy, maybe in terms of remuneration, maybe you are not giving them better money. You collect more money and give them peanuts, you think that they are not relevant but they are critical.

“If customs or institutions think they are big, without you people, the movement will not be. So, without those drivers driving those trucks, nothing will move, so, with that understanding, you have to try and reach an agreement with them so that you employ Nigerians so that I won’t be chasing you people trying to ascertain their nationalities.

“You heard on the radio the other time, even if you are on WhatsApp, you will discover that a Togolese drove a truck all the way to Anambra containing arms and ammunitions from this axis. It’s trending, I know most of you must have seen it; it is also an indictment on us. How did he travel there? Did he go with passport? So, you people will see that our work is interwoven; there is no way we cannot relate.

“So, the major thing for us as we say is to do the right thing, the right mostly is not even the passport. If we know you, it is not even about passport but the right thing is about national security. Don’t encourage or facilitate arms smuggling into the country because we cannot legalize any illegality.

“We need your cooperation, if you see those things; you reject them because if those guns are encouraged to come in, you don’t know who they will attack”.

The very elated Controller who expressed happiness over the visit by the association however solicited the cooperation of freight forwarders in checking the incidences of smuggling and trafficking of human beings from the border urging them to volunteer information to the Service as they were willing to protect the identity of the informant.

Earlier in his opening speech, the National President of AREFFN, Mr. Bala Lawan Daura recalled that the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders Nigeria (AREFFN) which was one of the accredited associations by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) was on a courtesy visit to the chapter and the various security agencies that his members were working with as it was not up to two months that the national leadership was elected into office by the association.

Daura informed that having settled down, they felt it was time to go round to introduce their members to the authorities in order to make them understand their relationship with various security agencies in their areas of coverage.

According to him,” So, we feel we should come to say hi to you and to tell you that we are in support of your administration here and to tell our members at the chapter level that they should cooperate with you and work with you.

“So, we use this opportunity to tell them to support you so that you achieve your goals and let them be good agents, if there is anything that challenges them, they should not hesitate to come and meet you. Let them not be the violent agents, let them be the good agents that everybody can be proud of. So we are here today to extend our hands of friendship to the Nigerian Immigration Service, Seme Border command.”