The chairman of the Senate Committee on the Ministry of Interior, Kashim Shettima, has advocated for an urgent increase in budgetary allocation to the interior ministry to execute its mandate effectively amid several jailbreaks and an influx of illegal aliens.

The Director of Press in the ministry, Blessing Lere-Adams, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr Shettima, representing Borno Central Senatorial District, stated this when interior minister Rauf Aregbesola appeared before the committee on its 2021 budget performance and the 2022 budget defence.

“The budget allocation to the internal security sector assists nations to properly strategise and plan for needed activities of monitoring and surveillance arrangements and for checking the movements of people who come into nations illegally with dangerous arms and ammunition, herders and their cattle, miners with fake travel documents,” Mr Shettima pointed out. “All of whom come in through porous and unmanned and unprotected borders, thus creating numerable insecurities and chaos to the affected country.”

Mr Aregbesola, when asked about the policy thrust of the ministry, said, “The ministry addresses directly citizenship, travel document, residence permit, insurance of expatriate quota, marriages and intermarriages.”

He added, “While at the same time, superintending over the four services under it, including the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), Federal Fire Service (FFS), Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).”

(NAN)