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Abu Dhabi: In a quiet courtroom, she sits with her head down, humming a song, waiting for the judge to deliver a verdict that might send her to jail and then back to Nigeria.
"It's a song called 'My God is a Miracle God'," she says with a smile on her face. "Do you want me to sing it for you?"
Dressed in blue overalls and a white headscarf, she clears her throat, turns back in her chair and starts to sing.
The 20 male inmates sitting on the other side all stare at her in awe. The noise in the outside hall and the guards' footsteps momentarily fade and her voice echoes in the chamber.
It isn't that they can understand the words of the song, but her voice is liberating.
If this were a different occasion, the men may have applauded and she might have bowed, but it is a sombre moment. They are all in court.
The legendary Nigerian hymn has become Miriam Mumodu's anthem. Mumodu is a 26-year-old Nigerian woman who in pursuit of a new life, used a stolen British passport to get into the UAE.
In pursuit
She is one of hundreds of people from mostly Asia and Africa who enter the UAE using stolen or fake passports in pursuit of a new life.
In 2007, 533 people were caught and tried in the UAE using fake or stolen passports, according to new documents released to Gulf News by the Ministry of Interior.
Some aim to settle here, others try to make their way to Europe or to North America.
To these people, a European or a North American passport is not just a travel document, it is a passport to freedom that can deliver them from their old life.
Some pay thousands of dollars and risk their own lives for the slightest chance of a new beginning.
On February 20, Mumodu left Lagos, Nigeria and entered Dubai through the airport using a British passport with ease.
Because of the British passport she carried she didn't need to have a visa prior to her arrival. She went to stay in one of the cheapest hotels in Deira, using the little money she had to survive and stay out of trouble.
Job promise
Six days later she travelled to Abu Dhabi International Airport, hoping that the British passport would take her to her final destination, Toronto in Canada, where she was promised a job.
Mumodu checked in her luggage and got her boarding pass. She proceeded to the passport control counter with confidence to get her exit stamp, but at the last moment, her fortunes took a turn for the worse.
Passport control noticed that Mumodu's face, although similar, did not match the picture on the British passport. The authorities made some inquiries and determined the passport was stolen.
The police were called and Mumodu was questioned. When she realised that her plans had crumbled, she confessed that it was not her passport and that she was a Nigerian who had left Nigeria for a better life in Canada.
Mumodu did not weigh the risks before she left. She did not know that the owner of the British passport would report the passport missing and that she would be flagged whenever she used it.
She failed to realise that she could be imprisoned or deported if she were caught. She neglected the fact that she had to go through many passport checks before she got to her final destination. She thought her plan to come to the UAE en route to Canada had no flaws. She just took the risk for the chance of a better life.
On June 1, 2008 Mumodu stood before three judges at the Federal Supreme Court and told the high judge a story that she thought would break his heart and let him issue a light sentence.
According to her account, Mumodu's home was burnt down and all of her belongings were gone.
A few days later she found a British passport outside her house near a garbage can.
She took the passport and saw that the girl's picture was nearly identical to her. That, she thought, was her ticket to freedom. She claimed that she was a devout Muslim.
She told the judge that she begged tourists for money for a long time to gather enough money to purchase the ticket.
After collecting enough money, Mumodu was able to get a false Nigerian passport with the same name, birth date and birthplace as that in the British passport.
This, she thought, would strengthen her claim of being the valid holder of the British passport. While getting a legitimate Nigerian passport costs 10,000 naira (Dh320), a fake passport can cost thousands of dollars and there are dozens of ways to get it in the notorious streets of Ikeja, an overcrowded suburb in Lagos that has become the capital of many fraudulent documents.
Mumodu's passport was issued in Bermuda. Bermuda is a British overseas territory and its citizens are entitled to the same rights as the British living thousands of miles away, also passports.
When Gulf News contacted the rightful owner of the British passport, Fanaye Broadbelt, in Bermuda, she was shocked to hear that her passport had been used by a Nigerian in the UAE. "My passport was stolen in 2005 out of a car when I was on a trip to London," said the 26 year-old Bermudan.
"I reported it as lost, along with all of my credit cards. I was issued a new passport and that was the end of that, or so I thought," she said.
It is unknown how the British passport made its way to Nigeria, but Broadbelt said "there are a lot of Nigerians living in London and it could be that someone took it back to sell it there".
In the court in Abu Dhabi, the judge asked Mumodu a dozen questions where there were holes in her testimony, but Mumodu stuck to her story.
With no way to verify her story as true or false and with no reliable identification with her, the judge ordered a six-month sentence with an order for her to be deported after completing her sentence and to never return to the UAE. Her eyes were scanned in case she tries to come back using a different passport and identification.
Authorities suspect Mumodu spent thousands of dollars on a British passport she didn't know had been reported stolen, two tickets to Dubai and Canada respectively, accommodation in Dubai and a fake Nigerian passport.
What she thought was her passport to freedom, was in fact a ticket to jail.
Her story is one of hundreds of cases being brought before the UAE courts. "We have anywhere from 30 to 50 cases each week and it's the same procedure," a judge in the Federal Supreme Court said. The border police catch them, the judges convict them and the guards make sure they serve their term, and life repeats its self.
What is the solution? "There is nothing we can do as a country to stop this from happening. We enforce the laws and that's all that we have available to us," the judge adds.
Brigadier Nasser Al Manhali, director of Naturalisation and Citizenship at the Ministry of Interior, has been assigned with the task of overseeing the country's strategies to address this problem.
"As the UAE establishes itself as a land of opportunities, we are noticing a greater interest in people wanting to come here. We welcome those who come through the legal channels, but those who don't, have to face the law," he says.
Computers
Al Manhali says relying on computers alone is not enough. "The reason she got into Dubai is because computers fail. That is why we rely on human capacity. We train passport control, airline staff, airport police to watch for signs," Al Manhali added.
Of the 533 arrests and convictions for false passports made in 2007, Al Manhali says many had stolen British passports.
Mumodu's plans failed, and when she has served her term she will be escorted on a plane back to Lagos and have to live with the fact that she gambled away her money.
Do you think it is worth the risk to travel using a fake passport? How do you think such illegal activities affect the country's workforce? How can it be curbed better?
Send us your views at letter2editor@gulfnews.com or fill in the form below to send your comments.
Your comments
I was just reading the scenario of people using fake passports and realised that this type of people should be held whenever they enter emirates. The Nigerian female should consider herself lucky as the courts ordered 4 her six month jail term.
QATHAR
DUBAI,UAE
Posted: July 14, 2008, 11:05
For those involved it is worth it, other wise they wouldn't do it. UAE should nip it in the butt and contact the country the people came from and advise them to check the passport before letting them out of the country.
Maryam
Sharjah,UAE
Posted: July 14, 2008, 10:48
Well it is big crime and i don't know how people take such a big risk, at least I cant dare to even think about it. There are 97% chances to be caught and 3% chances to get through. Taking such a big risk and spend thousand's of $ for what, going to jail.
People think before you do things like fake passports. Finger and eye scanning should be done at every airport no matter if people come on visit visa or for job and it should be linked with other countries.
Nawaz
AbuDhabi,UAE
Posted: July 14, 2008, 08:59
The work done by the Immigration is one of the best and wish them all the best to carry on such wonderful Job.
The problem lies with the Government which these people are having the fake passports .
So its their Government to make sure such passports are curb and they should put all their efforts to stop such problem not only for the people using them but for other countries they go .
Hussein Abbas
Mombasa
Hussein
Mombasa,Kenya
Posted: July 14, 2008, 08:47
This kind of asinine behavior is a normal occurrence among Africans generally, because of the craze to check out of their countries due to severe economic hardship. The amount expended to get a fake passport would have gotten her established in Nigeria. l think the immigrations should equip themselves properly because it will continue to happen as long as the situation in Africa does not change for better. It may not likely affect the workforce negatively because nearly al the immigrants coming from Africa especially Nigeria are all graduates who found themselves jobless for no fault of theirs. Regards, Sam.
Samuel
Dubai,UAE
Posted: July 14, 2008, 08:46
It is indeed illegal to enter other country with fake passport. It will affect the country's security and economy.
Preveen
Dubai,UAE
Posted: July 14, 2008, 08:45
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