CLEEN, stakeholders brainstorm on border -free migration among ECOWAS members

Emeka Ibemere

What started as a discussion later turned out to be a hot debate of sort among the stakeholders who gathered at a ‘Summit on Mobility and Security in West Africa’ organized by CLEEN Foundation with support from the Open Society Foundations, OSF,.

It was on Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at the R&A City Hotel, Ikeja, and Lagos State venue of the summit.

The stakeholders across the hue and cry of the various security agencies, representatives of ECOWAS, media, Researchers, Civil Society Groups, Non-Governmental organisations and others, who have a stake at the ECOWAS borders, brainstorm on finding solutions to difficulties experienced by migrants and immigrants, including travellers across the region.

The summit was based on ‘The Project on Mobility and Security Challenges in West Africa’, a research and advocacy project aimed at studying trends in migration and security management in seven identified borders in West Africa painstakingly taken by CLEEN Foundation.

The goal of the project is to increase understanding of the trends and dynamics in mobility and the security of border in the region.

The project was funded by the Open Society Foundations (OSF) through its New Executives Fund (NEF) initiative from June 2013 to June 2015. The project was conduct through field studies and interviews with travellers, officials and other border users in land border crossings across the ECOWAS Co-Prosperity Alliance Zone (COPAZ) by singling out the borders between-- Nigeria and Benin; Benin and Togo; Togo and Ghana as well as in the Cote d’Ivoire migration corridor; where CLEEN Foundation singled out the borders between Cote d’Ivoire and Mali on the one hand and Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso on the other hand.

The project was one of CLEEN Foundation’s initiatives for developing the migration and securitization portfolio of work which serves as a crucial follow up to a number of earlier projects on migration and law enforcement in the sub-region.

 Project outputs include publication of research findings through policy briefs and a book as well as a number of advocacy outreaches to regional institutions and civil society organisations in the region. The second phase of the project is envisaged to significantly broaden CLEEN Foundation’s intervention on migration and mobility in West Africa.

Speaking in her opening remarks, Kemi Okenyodo, Executive Director, CLEEN Foundation, said migration is a leading development challenge facing the world today adding that the whole world is considered to be in motion with massive population movements both within the regions and also across the regions of the world. “Some forms of migration are conspicuous-the world cannot fail to notice the unprecedented and often suicidal movements of persons from sub-Saharan Africa towards the developed regions of the world”, she said.

“On the other hand, the interconnectedness of some communities across national borders means that crossing international borders is no more complicated that a casual stroll down the street”.

She identified migration as an important security factor for three important reasons-international migration exposes travellers to an array of specific security challenges which they would not have otherwise faced in their places or regular abode, communities are exposed to different security risk factors occasioned by the flow of migrants within a given territory and the intersection between migrants and locals are sometimes accompanied by crimes and criminality. “Beyond these and other challenges of migration, the world as we know it today, depends on migration to achieve the interspersing of cultures, goods, services and peoples,” Okenyodo explained.

According to her, beyond the historic legacies of migration, Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, devoted much of her 40 years of existence as a regional force, to promote free movement of persons and goods across national boundaries in West Africa.

CLEEN Foundation Executive Director regretted that despite the efforts of the regional organisation, the framework provided by ECOWAS has not been fully utilized as regional travel remains plagued by numerous challenges. “The CLEEN Foundation, benefited from grant support from the Open Society Foundation, which enabled it to conduct a study that seeks to probe the intersection between migration and security and how these play out in the borders”, she explained.

“Between 2013 and 2014, we conducted interviews in seven international borders in the region. In the first instance, we followed the migration route cutting across Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana and then explored the corridors between landlocked Mali and Burkina-Faso with Cote d’Ivoire”.

“We are here today to share the findings of our research with the hope that it would stimulate reflections and discussions on the important topic of migration in our region. We hope that the discussion here will benefit from the different discussions going on in your organisation and networks and also that the conclusions from here will go on to enrich future discussions”, she ended her remark with hope that the opinion reached at the summit would continue to network and work together in the future.

 “On our part, we have developed from this study, a rich dataset composed with responses of travellers and border users in seven countries. We look forward to working with you to further disseminate the findings amongst different stakeholders”.

Mohammed Nuruddeen, deputy Comptroller of Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, Seme border Command explained that the issue of migration is of economic, political, cultural and social reasons. According to him, when the economic situation is hard in particular country, citizens of that country would start moving away from that country to another country, where they think they could get greener pasture.

“And look at what is happening now; African youths are moving to Western Europe, between Libya and Sicily, a lot of people are moving towards Italy and a lot of lives have been lost in the process of leaving the African continent where life is hard”, Nuruddeen explained. “The other reason is political and due to political persecutions against one tribe, cultural and social reason also helps in influx of migrants”.

He said the mobility in migration occurred by vehicles, bicycles, and motorbikes and even trekking and added that on security, NIS is mandated to handle immigration problems at the borders and said there are other security agencies at the border but that their duty is on issuance of travelling documents, visa and patrolling the borders. “What we do is to check the documentation of the person travelling out or coming in for documentation of his movement. We see that before somebody is giving visa, certainly the person has to be monitored before, during and after his trip”.

NIS boss said when at the entry point, a form is giving to the traveller, interview is conducted before visa is issued out to the person, and its the duty of the NIS to monitor and probe the person very well, by identifying if the person’s visa is fake or genuine, if the person is giving permit to enter the country, they also monitor the person because they don’t give free hand to person in a country and that is why they have their Intelligence, Inspectorate and Enforcement, IIE”,.

 He revealed that this group move on mufti and monitor the expatriates in Nigeria and find out what they do in the country. According to him, there are other agencies at the border, whose duty is on security at the border. He said the Department of State Security DSS, Police, Bomb Disposal Unit, NDLEA, Custom Service, and others are responsible for security at the border.

“Security at the border means free from danger and normally NIS are the first agency to be seen why entering into a country and the last agency while leaving a country”, he added.

“The issue of border corps is being giving attention by the Nigerian government, where officers responsible for monitoring people entering the country are monitored”. He said at the Seme, if you beat the NIS official; there is another border corps, one in charge of control post and the other in charge of border corps.

He said it’s the duty of the NIS to see that illegal immigrants are checked, arrested and repatriated.

Nuruddeen explained that deportation has to be done through the court while repatriation is an immediate action by the NIS, because you don’t need to seek any court approval”.

Abena Telley Abioye, whose research covered the Ghana-Togo borders, who also claimed to be a migrant herself but married a Nigerian, reports that at Afawo border, between Togo and Ghana, there were challenges crossing the borders.

Abioye explained the difficulties encountered by travellers and border users of the borders as languages, bribery, harassments, intimidations, and touting.

 She explained that your nationality makes it easier for your passage at the border. She said there are various security agencies at the both borders ranging from Customs services, police Gendarmes, and help workers. According to Abioye, people are killed at the border and at times corpses litter the borders while some are duped into the sea and that it usually occur at night. She further explained that sexual harassments are rampant from the security agencies as the make advances to women.

She said all manner of activities go on at the borders-currency trafficking, bribery, theft, assaults, child labour, death threats, and mass movement of traders from Ghana into Togo than otherwise. She also said illegal routes and borders exist between the two countries.

Kamara DMylone Epse Soro, who covered the Mali-Cote d I’vore borders, also said the challenges are too many and points language as one of the barriers in crossing the borders. She stated that the two countries share common border, language, culture, marriage, social and religious resemblance. She said it’s easy to cross the borders among them than Anglo speaking traveller. According to her, illegal routes also exist and that majority of the travellers make use of bicycles, motorbikes and cars. She revealed that security breaches exist at the borders where officials do not understand border lines. Boundary lines always crop up troubles among the security agents with the two countries. “Nationality or where you come from plays important role in easy crossing of the borders as each country try to protect their citizens”, Kamara stated. “There are no cordial relationships with the other country security agents and they don’t call each other.”  

Ogunyemi Olusegun Samson, another researcher who investigated the Nigeria-Benin border, adds that Seme border is not an organised border because things are turned unofficially right. According to him, harassment of travellers are too high at Seme border and on your way to Seme, too many checkpoints exist with all manner of security agencies doing double checks and cross-checking. He said at the border palpable tensions exist there as security men at the Nigerian border are not friendly to travellers and the relationship between travellers and security personnel are not cordial. He explained that there is huge communication gap as French and English language speakers experience difficulties. “Your language is stronger than your travelling documents. There are many activities from Benin than from Nigeria to Benin”, he said. “There are rampant agents from the Nigeria side which makes passage difficult”.

Overall, stakeholders observed that there are operational lapses and proliferation of checkpoints. They also pointed out that there are corruptions and bribery, harassment, crime and victimization, robbery, road accidents, demand for money to cross the border and other challenges hampering the ECOWAS free movement protocol order.

Also, the participants expressed that there are administrative lapses, presence of unofficial agents at the borders, like the police doing the work of the NIS, and Customs service doing the duty of police as well as others. Poor relationship and lack of synergy among the security agencies are one of the factors hindering easy passage at the borders. The borders were observed to be too congested, no identification or proper borderlines, low awareness of travellers about their rights concerning proper documents required of them and that their ignorance about giving bribes before crossing the borders.

Some of the administrative impediments are Visa, yellow Cards, passports, travellers quick to give bribe than obtaining the right documents for travel. It was also gathered that there is safety of life at the borders but no safety of goods and properties. At the end, the summit resolved with resolution that the policy makers and ECOWAS, should try and reduce the number of checkpoints, train officers, try and reduce the crowd or apply crowd control measures at the borders, dealt with the unofficial agents at the borders, improve information sharing among security agencies and establish join monitoring team of the ECOWAS security team at the borders.