The craze to travel abroad by all means arguably became a noticeable fad in Nigeria about 20 years ago, when unemployed graduates, prostitutes and school drop-outs began to explore every crooked method of finding their way into western countries.
Methods common to these sets of desperate youngsters include the most dehumanising stowing away system. By this, young Nigerians hide themselves in cargo compartment of ships so that they could be ferried out of the country without the knowledge of the owners of the ship. Another harrowing method of running out of the country is crossing the border on foot and escaping into any of the North African countries, especially Libya, from where they cross to Spain. Many have lost their lives in the process.
Perhaps, the most criminally-inclined method of travelling abroad is the use of another individual‘s passport in which the new, albeit fake owner of the passport bears the data identity of the original owner of the passport. In a few cases, such fraudulent people had been lucky to beat the screening machinery at foreign embassies’ entry borders and had triumphantly entered the foreign country of their choice. But most often, many others have not been so lucky. The fortunate ones among them were simply refused visas, while the unfortunate ones were arrested at the embassies and handed over to the police.
In the last one year, detectives at the Criminal Investigation Department, Lagos State Police Command, and the Special Fraud Unit, Nigeria Police, Milverton Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, have prosecuted over 30 suspects for passport-related offences. An investigation by our correspondent showed that 17 of the suspects pleaded guilty and were summarily tried and convicted. However, the sentences seem not to be a sufficient deterrent for the convicts. The sentences ranged between six and 18 months imprisonment, and in most cases, with an option of fine.
The investigation further showed that sometime in 2005, a gang of armed robbers raided the Lagos home of a media executive. The executive (names withheld), who was still at work at about 8pm when the robbers struck, had his passport stolen among other valuables. The passport, seen as hot cake, had expired visas of many foreign countries. The case was reported at all the embassies concerned. Over two years after the robbery, precisely in December 2007, a 31-year-old man, Segun Amure, was arrested with the stolen passport at the British Embassy. He was processing a UK visa when he was arrested. Amure was not alone. After adopting the name, date of birth, state of origin, marital status et al, of the original owner of the passport, he was joined in a phoney marriage with a lady, Joy Alarape, so that the lady could obtain a British visa as the wife of a ‘frequent traveller.’ The lady was also arrested.
Since the stolen passport had only expired visas, the culprits needed to apply for a visa renewal before the passport could be used. However, since the case had been reported to both the police and the High Commission, it was easy to invite the culprits for an interview and arrest.
During interrogation, Amure, who is in the custody of the SFU and will soon appear in court, told our correspondent that he had been making futile attempts to emigrate since 1998. He said a passport racketeer, identified as Fola Arogundade, offered him the stolen passport and promised him a visa for a fee of N300,000. ”I never met Joy before, it was Fola who arranged everything and told me that both of us would appear at the embassy as husband and wife. After we had been given our passports, Fola gave me Joy‘s number so that I could call her. Some days before the Ileya festival, I received a call that we were to appear at the embassy for interview on January 3. I met Joy there. A security man first sent us away, but I met another man who promised to assist us. The man collected our papers and went inside. He came out about 20 minutes later and asked us to follow him in. We were asked to sit down and we waited for about four hours before a white man opened the door and asked if we were the couple intending to travel. I said yes and he just beckoned to a man standing by the door and pointed at us. The man, who we later discovered is a policeman, took us away from the embassy and that was how we found ourselves here,” Amure said.
However, after his arrest, detectives at the SFU, who were bent on getting to the root of the matter, had a Herculian task tracing the whereabouts of Arogundade, the man behind the sale of the stolen passport. At a point, the suspect was said to have travelled to London. He was also said to have been deported. After about two weeks of search, the detectives traced him to a house in Ikorodu, Lagos, where he was arrested.
Arogundade himself admitted that he had been preparing fake passports and other travel documents for desperate travellers for many years for a fee. “I do most of the paper work at Oluwole (Lagos Island‘s now demolished notorious spot for forging and counterfeiting documents). All I do is to buy an original but stolen passport, I will then take it to Oluwole where they will remove the original passport photograph and fix the fake owner‘s passport photograph. It costs me N20,000 to do that,” Arogundade said.
The suspect claimed to have bought the passport he used for Amure from one Alberto, who he said was in London and a kingpin in passport racketeering. He further linked the passport to another suspect, Abiodun Adewunmi, who is also in the SFU net. Alberto allegedly sent a telephone number to Adewunmi and asked him to call the line. The owner of the line was the one who reportedly delivered the passport to Adewunmi and the latter then handed it over to Arogundade.
Arogundade, 35, who confessed that he had no stable job, said some of the people he had procured fake travel documents for had successfully used them to travel out of the country, usually by bribing departure point officials and then pleading for assylum in Europe; while a few others had not been so lucky. Although all the suspects are still in SFU’s custody, the commissioner in charge of the police formation, Mr. Olayinka Balogun, told our correspondent that the suspects would have been charged to court two weeks ago but for some legal and administrative bottlenecks.
The Deputy Director, West Africa, Entry Clearance, British Deputy High Commission, Mr. Adrian Loxton, blamed the dubious persons behind passport scams in Nigeria for the increasing number of people having forged travel documents at the embassies. In an interview with our correspondent, Loxton said, ”We are not out to prosecute Nigerians, but we want to discourage those behind the fraud. We are aware that they are making a lot of money from the dubious business. They paint a rosy picture for the people but the reality is very different. We love Nigerians and we like to do business with them. We want those who have genuine intentions to come to the UK. We‘ll definitely give visas to Nigerians who have all the qualifications to travel to the UK. It takes an average of a fortnight for anybody to secure a visa here. We give the visas after looking at the applicant‘s background, whether he has a work or not. We consider his bank account and also find out whether he has a family, wife and children here in Nigeria or not. If he satisfies all the conditions, we‘ll surely allow him to travel.”
Loxton said the embassy had introduced biometrics in its screening process and this had been helpful in detecting more fraud, especially of applicants using Ori Olori. In addition, he noted that some of the officials of the embassy had been sent on a special course abroad to detect all travel-related crimes. He said he had discovered that there were great opportunities for the youth in the country, adding that Nigerians preferred to travel abroad because they erroneously believe that it is easier to make more money in a foreign land. The envoy also praised the SFU men who are attached to the embassy, describing them as ”very effective and cooperative.”
By Kunle Adeyemi
The Punch
Friday, February 1, 2008
