The Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, Murtala Mohammed International
Airport, MMIA, Lagos has continued to record a drop in the Visa On Arrival, VoA at the airport.
This is just as they recorded about 800 returnees from Libya and others.
Investigation revealed that, the NIS MMIA in January this year recorded 440 VoA while in February it dropped to 265.
This has been attributed to travel ban, suspension and reduction of flights by some countries and airlines due to the novel corona virus, COVID-19.
According to an immigration source, “The traffic has been slow now
compare to as before, so many airlines have communicated to us that due to technical issues they are reducing or not flying for example
Turkish, Qatar airlines and so others for a while. That is what we are
experiencing, you can see the hall is empty now and the influx of our guests, the number is not much as before.”
“This shows the implication of Covid 19 to business investors to
Nigerian or ease of doing business in the country.”
It was observed at the airport that both the Port Health and immigration personnel were working assiduously to ensure effective the implementation of the international health vaccination certificate
popularly called the Yellow card.
It was also learned that the earlier agitation between passengers and
Immigration personnel in the wake of the coronavirus have stopped as
passengers now surrender their documents for checks.
On protection of officers against covid19, our source said “We are
provided with sanitizers and face mask every day, it has become a
consumable, we change it on and on and port health always give us advice on how to use them, so we have become port health officers in disguise”
“Our embarkation form, the information there are very reliable and that is the bulk of the data for the passengers, on passenger manifest, so these are the raw data that give us a trace to the passenger in line and it is really helpful.” added the source
Despite the corona virus pandemic, about 800 people including
voluntary returnees, deportees and repatriated arrived the country in
the month of January.
Investigation revealed that more on the list of the returnees were voluntarily returnees, those who have found out that they can no longer tolerate staying in that country.
It was also gathered that deportees were negligible and repatriations
were a little bit higher than deportation while the voluntary topped the list.
According to sources close to the immigration service at the airport,
all the returnees were treated Ike normal passengers, profile them
without stigmatization.
There has not been any issues of human trafficking in the last two
months through the airport, it was further gathered.
