Why We Gave Top ISIS Leader ‘Ahmed Al-Assir’ a Visa – Nigerian Officials

 

According to PREMIUM TIMES, it has been revealed why Nigerian officials gave Ahmed Al-Assir, a top ISIS terrorist a Visa into the country.

Radical Lebanese Islamic cleric, Ahmad Al-Assir, who was arrested last week as he attempted traveling to Nigeria, got an entry visa into Nigeria because the country’s embassies do not capture applicants’ biometric data, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has told PREMIUM TIMES. Biometrics cover a variety of unique identifiable attributes of people including fingerprint, iris print, hand, face, voice, gait or signatures, and are used for identification and authentication.

The foreign affairs official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said with the surge of security breaches and religious fundamentalism, biometric capturing has become a norm yet, Nigeria, currently battling Boko Haram insurgency, has failed to utilise the technology.

“While the measure tends to pre-empt influx of terrorists instead they (sic) depend on the use of stop list for potential visa applicants,” the official said. He continued, “If we have a bank for storing the number of personal data which should be distributed to all our embassies; the prevailing spate of insecurity in the globe which has gone beyond just the antiquated stop list method would be checkmated.” The official revealed that the antiquated list which Nigerian embassies rely on are not even backed with photographs or fingerprints.