Over 500 Immigrants Arrested, Detained At Aflao Border; Made To Pay GHC500 Each Before Their Release
Officials of the Ghana Immigration Service have mounted barriers across the Ketu South Municipality in pursuit of Nigerians and other ECOWAS citizens who used unapproved routes into the country.
This has resulted in serious upheavals between immigration service officers and the in the community where those barriers mounted.
This paper has gathered that, persons who have been arrested by immigration officers for using unapproved routes into the country are being made to pay an amount of GHC500.00 each before being released to continue their journey.
According to the reports those who did not have financial capability to pay are still being in the hands of the Ghana Immigration Service.
But, snippets of information received has it that officials of the Immigration Service have created Mobile Money accounts themselves through which they receive money from relatives of immigrants who could not afford to pay for their release.
This has also created some discomfort to many of the travellers; some of whom were not able to pay such amount of money and hence were held hostage in a very tight corner at the border.
According to the people, the country is no more in a military regime yet people are being treated like ‘animals’ in this Corona times.
About Five Hundred (500) people have been rounded up in their latest operations on a daily basis and were made to pay 500 Ghana Cedis each.
Most of these people are Nigerians with few Ghanaian residents living in Aflao who travelled to Togo for business and were returning home.
Information gathered from residents indicated that the Immigration officials who are doing such arrests cannot identify the people living in the communities and those that used unapproved route into the country.
According to eye witnesses, “it is very alarming at this period of Corona virus that people would be kept closely in such manner. For those people to be kept at one place is uncalled for”
They however indicated that if Immigration allowed these people into the country, and try to re-arrests them for using the country unapproved route just to extort money from them have actually thrown dust in the eyes of people.
In an interview with David Agorsu, Security Expert in Aflao, the actions of the Ghana Immigration Service at the border is appalling and makes Ghana unpopular abroad and further put Ghanaians in danger.
He said the arrests of those Nigerians who used unapproved route into the country are in line with rule of law and was necessary for the country national security but there need to be an intelligent service “peeling back that onion to identify the worst offenders.”
According to him, those behind the collections of money from detainees who were been held hostage must be brought to book.
-PROSPER AGBENYEGA
