NAN-H-41
Training
By Sumaila Ogbaje
Abuja, Oct. 23, 2017 (NAN) The Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, is collaborating with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to train aviation professionals and immigration officers in West Africa on travel documents management.
Mr Dauda Yahaya, Deputy Rector at NCAT, disclosed this at the commencement of the training entitled: “Control of Authenticity and Validity of Travel Documents at Airport Borders”, on Monday in Abuja.
Yahaya explained that ICAO had requested NCAT to facilitate the training with the view to enhancing the capacity of airport officials in combating the cases of fake travel documents.
“It was a request from ICAO that NCAT should host this training to improve the knowledge and skills of people handling our borders, particularly in the airport.
“So based on that request, we went ahead to discuss the possibility and we agreed that we were going to host the training.
“We put information across to the different Chief Executives to make nomination of relevant people for this particular training and the Immigration service gave us five people.
“NCAA gave us about seven people, four people from FAAN, one from NCAT and two from Ghana.
“We had expected some other people to be here but it is only Ghana that was able to make it because of the short notice,’’ he said.
Yahaya said that NCAT had plan to incorporate that type of training into its programme, adding that the instructor from NCAT, who was part the training, would facilitate it in the college.
He stated that the aviation college was committed to building capacity using its instructors and other agencies officials that handled border management directly in the airports.
According to him, if NCAT are able to build capacity, it will go ahead to run this training independently because it is needed for all people who handle airports borders.
“At NCAT, we are working towards getting what we called Aviation Training Centre of Excellence and we are almost there.
“I am expecting that between this week and next, we will get that certification because we have succeeded in meeting all the requirements,’’ he said.
Doug Scott, an ICAO Instructor at the training, said the training was part of ICAO’s decision to consolidate the competencies of front-line inspection officers to examine travel documents effectively.
Scott added that the training would allow the officers to expedite the movements of legitimate travelers/passengers while intercepting high-risk individuals and persons of interest.
He said the training would help them to examine travel document to detect whether it was genuine or forged.
“The purpose of this training from ICAO is to improve processing of passengers through borders to make it easier for people to travel.
“If there have been genuine documents, immigration officers should be able to check the genuineness and authenticate the validity of documents of all passengers.
“ It is necessarily to improve facilitation of both sea borders and air borders so that genuine people can travel.
“If they are not genuine, officials should also have the capacity to be able to identify that document at the first point.
“It has impact on the security of airport because in the first place, you don’t know why that person has a forged document.
“He may be trying to hide past history, may be from the history that he may be denied visa or he may want to perpetrate a crime in that country.
“So it is important for security operatives in that country to identify people with forged documents in order to control crime,’’ he said.
Scott said that ICAO had held similar training programme in Tanzania in August with participants from Kenya and Uganda in attendance, saying that feedback from participants had been encouraging.
According to him, now we are in Nigeria and there is need to expand and develop the scope further for us to continue with this in the future.
“Our expectation from the participants is that they go away with improved knowledge and we hope that they will improve their capacity and knowledge from what they have learnt.
“Some of the participants already have higher level of knowledge so far and we hope that at the end of this training they become instructors in their various organisations,’’ he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the United Nations Security Council’s resolution 2178 on Foreign Terrorist Fighters, provided for measures for preventing counterfeiting, forgery of identity papers and travel documents. (NAN)
OYS/AFA
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Edited by Felix Ajide