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Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Interior announced on Thursday that the Nigeria Immigration Service has commissioned an Artificial Intelligence-driven Integrated Operations Centre capable of tracking every traveller who entered the country over the past decade, marking the first time Nigerian immigration authorities have claimed a real-time data capability sufficient to identify and pursue visa overstayers at national scale.
Minister of Interior Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo disclosed the development at the 2026 Sectoral Performance Review Retreat of the Federal Ministry of Interior, held in Abuja and themed “Accountable Leadership, Measurable Impact: Reviewing Results, Renewing Commitments.” “We can now know the exact number of people that have overstayed in our country and make the number available,” Tunji-Ojo said. “As of today, we have been able to build our Integrated Operations Centre and the Network Operations Centre, which we never had before.”
The Integrated Operations Centre is an AI-driven multilayered system incorporating cybersecurity and network operating units that strengthens border and migration management as well as expatriate administration. It enables the Nigeria Immigration Service to access comprehensive immigration records, including origin, entry details, and visa compliance status of every foreign national who has visited Nigeria within the past ten years. Tunji-Ojo said the development gave the NIS real-time record and data of all travellers entering the country, transforming what had previously been a largely manual, paper-dependent border management architecture into a data-driven enforcement framework. The IOC is expected to serve as a central hub for integrating advanced tools that support border control, combat irregular migration threats, and facilitate legitimate travel and residency processes, aligned with the Ministry’s broader deployment of AI, biometrics, and modern technologies in Nigeria’s border security architecture.
Tunji-Ojo argued that enforcing visa regulations was necessary to protect national sovereignty and align Nigeria with international immigration practice. He noted that Nigerians who violate immigration laws abroad are tracked and sanctioned, and that Nigeria must adopt equivalent standards. “Outside of Nigeria, they go after irregular immigrants and we think we have to protect the sanctity of our borders,” he said.
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The announcement builds on a series of immigration enforcement reforms implemented since May 2025. The federal government introduced daily fines of $15 for foreigners overstaying their visas, with a grace period that expired on August 1, 2025. Under those rules, overstaying by six months attracts a five-year re-entry ban; overstaying by one year triggers a ten-year ban. The NIS also integrated the Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record system across Nigeria’s five international airports, enabling pre-arrival screening and tracking of passenger movements. Mezha The Integrated Operations Centre announced on Thursday represents the analytical layer above those enforcement mechanisms — a system capable of cross-referencing arrival records, departure data, and visa validity periods to generate a consolidated list of individuals who have exceeded their permitted stay.
The ministry’s credibility in this area has been tested. A case involving Chinese expatriates flagged for working without proper documentation and reportedly released without completing standard deportation protocols raised questions about selective enforcement within the immigration bureaucracy, with analysts calling on the minister to demand a full investigation into what internal mechanisms permitted such outcomes. ABC News The IOC’s architecture, if operational as described, would in principle create an audit trail that makes such procedural departures visible — though whether enforcement action follows uniformly will depend on institutional will as much as data availability.
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Tunji-Ojo also used the retreat to address the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, emphasising that the newly introduced VIP security service must be delivered without corruption or political influence. “NSCDC provides protection in an organised and corruption-free manner, where the son of a nobody will have the same opportunity as the son of anybody in government. If you are a businessman or there is a genuine threat to your life, you should be able to access protection without going through the minister, the Commandant General, or anyone else,” he said.
On the National Identity Management Commission, the minister said comprehensive data capture of all Nigerians remained an incomplete objective and that partial success was insufficient for national security purposes. “Not until every Nigerian has been captured can we say we have succeeded,” he said, setting the completion of Nigeria’s national digital identity database as a non-negotiable target within the ministry’s performance framework.
Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr Magdalene Ajani, who also spoke at the retreat, emphasised accountability as the foundational principle of the ministry’s 2026 institutional review, noting that performance commitments made at the previous year’s retreat would be examined against measurable outcomes rather than stated intentions.
Tunji-Ojo said the ministry would maintain focus on its security objectives through the 2027 election preparation period, rejecting suggestions that political season would dilute institutional attention. On correctional reform, he argued that a system in which individuals repeatedly returned to custody after serving sentences reflected a failure of rehabilitation rather than successful justice administration, and said the ministry would prioritise reform of custodial conditions alongside its border enforcement work.
No specific figure was given for the number of visa overstayers currently identified in the IOC database.
