Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola has decried the different ways expatriates come into the country to “steal” jobs meant for Nigerians.
Declaring open a stakeholders’ meeting on expatriate quota administration in Abuja on Wednesday April 14, the Minister raised an alarm of expatriates taking over jobs in the country.
Aregbesola averred that expatriates coming into the country to work as bricklayers, painters, high-end consorts and even hawking vegetables are clear economic sabotage acts that should be detected, stopped and sanctioned.
He said;
“I have a good cause to say that this meeting has been long overdue in the sense that its outcomes will tie up a lot of loose ends in the obsolete handbook last reviewed in 2004, which has been in use as a guide to granting approvals to requests for various types of expatriate quota made to the Ministry of Interior.
“I recall that during the presentation of the draft handbook on Business Permit & Expatriate Quota Administration by a 10-man committee set up to review the handbook, I made the case for an expanded stakeholder meeting that will generate a comprehensive handbook in line with international best practices.
“Some of the abuses we have discovered are egregious. We have seen cases of expatriates fraudulently coming in to work as bricklayers, painters and even high-end consorts.
“Some also circumvent the rules by dubiously acquiring Nigerian citizenship through scam marriages.
“The funny but tragic case of some Asians hawking vegetables went viral. These are clear economic sabotage acts that should be detected, stopped and sanctioned.”
