A Nigerian national has been arrested at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) for entering the country with a forged passport.
Accordingly, officials of the Immigration and Emigration Department’s branch at the BIA have reportedly taken the required measures to deport the 31-year-old Nigerian on the same flight in which he had arrived, after he attempted to enter the island nation with a Bahamian passport.
He had first travelled to Liberia from Nigeria, after which he had gone to Morocco and subsequently flown to Qatar, from where he arrived in Sri Lanka aboard a Qatar Airways flight.
Upon his arrival, the Nigerian national was sent to the Border Surveillance Unit at the BIA based on suspicions of his passport. It was subsequently confirmed that the passport had, in fact, been forged.
During the interrogation that followed, the Nigerian admitted to the passport being falsified, explaining that he opted to travel with it after several of his applications for a Sri Lankan visa had been rejected since 2022.
This issue comes in the backdrop of several Nigerian nationals being accused of various financial crimes involving ATMs, online databases and social media, which has reportedly made it harder for them to enter Sri Lanka, while also being subjected to strict background searches.
