MASSIVE EXTORTIONS ARE CONDEMNED BY TRAVELERS AT ECOWAS BORDERS

Cross-border travelers in the ECOWAS subregion are complaining more and more about what they call undue extortion at the various border crossings.

Road travelers from Nigeria to Ghana said that personnel from Customs, Immigration, the Police, and other security agencies of many nations had preyed on innocent nationals.

The head of the Association of Brotherhood Academic Scholars (ABAS) Visitations Committee, Archbishop Emmanuel Ekuri, is among those who travel frequently.

Ekuri, who just returned to Calabar from yet another trip to Ghana where he attended a one-week interfaith conference in Accra, recalled his experiences with border authorities on Tuesday and claimed that premeditated extortions and other corrupt acts continue unabated.

"When I travelled across the West Coast border yesterday, I got so worried over the ongoing massive extortions to the extent that I almost stopped the journey due to continual frustrations and delays.

"What I witnessed was appalling, grossly unbecoming and unacceptable. The massive extortions of helpless travellers, harassment, assaults and other forms of corrupt practices by uniformed personnel working at the border such as officers of NIS, police, DSS, Customs, and Drug Law Enforcement Agency, to mention just a few," he said.

He said this: "Before we could successfully cross borders after several hours of delays, we spent whooping sums far greater than what we could imagine in trying to stamp our international passports and bribery of officers."

Ekuri lamented that the current situation appears to be that passport holders now pay more because getting a passport stamped now costs up to 10,000 CFA while others with ID cards pay less.

He advised those planning to cross land borders to always have additional cash because "the charges by the border officers who prefer to masquerade under the guise of unscrupulous agents are arbitrary and quite exorbitant."

"All intending travellers should be wary of unscrupulous people at the borders and other forms of security risks, which is on the increase. You could be a target for crimes, including kidnapping and robbery. Be wary of people hovering around you in the guise of coming to help," he said further.

Ekuri urged government workers to act humanely when they are at the border: "The immigration of different national units should summarily dismiss erring and extortionate officers."

He also demanded that each country's official customs duty, fee, and tax rates be made available to the public so that visitors may insist on paying just the rates that had been approved.