Immigration agency denies backdoor employment

Rose Uzoma, head of NIS

Rose Uzoma, head of NIS

Nigeria’s Immigration Service (NIS) has said the it would inform Nigerians before commencing any recruitment of personnel.

Mrs Rose Uzoma, the Comptroller-General gave the pledge at a News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum in Abuja.

Rose Uzoma, head of NIS

She said media reports on a recent recruitment purportedly cancelled by Interior Minister, Abba Moro was false.

She claimed that no recruitment had taken place in recent times.

According to her, 12 states were disadvantaged and did not have too many immigration officers on the nominal role of the service, adding that the next recruitment would be used to attempt to correct the anomaly.

Last week, the Minister of Interior, Mr Abba Moro, cancelled a recruitment exercise in the service citing “apparent controversy trailing the exercise”.

The minister also directed that all appointment letters issued and documentation carried should be cancelled until the Prison and Immigration Board meets to consider the waiver granted the NIS to recruit.

But Uzoma put the blame of the minister’s action on media report which she said falsely reported about an “ongoing recruitment exercise”.

“The recent publication gave a very wrong impression; I want to put it on record that the Nigeria Immigration Service has not issued a single employment letter to any Nigerian this season.

“It is only two weeks ago that we got approval from the office of the Head of Service of the Federation to recruit and even when we had that approval, my minister travelled out of the country.

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“So, we are in the process of arranging this recruitment exercise. We needed also to get consent from the Federal Character Commission.

“We just got this approval from the Federal Character Commission on the procedures that we intend to adopt.

The comptroller-general said that the story on the irregular recruitment was published on the same day the service received approval for recruitment from the Federal Character Commission.

She described the publication as unfair and a move to malign her character.

Uzoma also said that the employment statistics in the NIS showed that the North Central zone of the country topped the work force of the service with 5,144 employees. She said that the South South zone had 4,306 employees with the North West zone accounting for 4,089 employees. The statistics also placed the South East zone in fourth position with 3,415 employees and the South West zone with 3,267 workers. According to her, the North East zone accounts for 3,095 employees.

Uzoma, however, said Ebonyi was the most disadvantaged state followed by Zamfara, FCT, and Sokoto states.

“Before that publication came out, we were discussing with the Federal Character Committee of the National Assembly because we noted that there are 12 states that seemed disadvantaged.”

Uzoma insisted that there was no rift between her and the Minister of Interior, Mr Abba Moro, noting that the publication was intended to cause disharmony between them.

“I am not aware of any disagreement between me and my honourable minister; as far as I am concerned, we are working very well and the minister has not complained to me about any promotion exercise.’’

Uzoma said promotion exercises in the service were usually done following due process and were always conducted by the Board of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Civil Defence, Prisons and the Federal Fire Service.

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