… Tasks them on professionalism
By Palma Ileye
Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, has elevated Sixty- four Senior Officers to their new ranks of Assistant Comptroller General and State Comptrollers.
In a ceremony held at its Headquarters in Abuja to decorate the newly elevated, the Comptroller General, NIS, Isah Jere Idris tasked them to professionalism saying that promotion was a product of high-level exercise, hard work, commitment, self-discipline, honesty, integrity and above all loyalty.
Jere noted that loyalty was the totality of the other virtues hence those who must command must first learn to obey saying that, “Your new ranks automatically place you in positions to make critical management decisions that will determine the fate of Officers and Men as well as the course of progress of the Service.
“As you wear your new ranks, your coordination, perspective and focus must be absolutely service centered, nationalistic, just and fair in all your dealings to command the respect and loyalty of your subordinates. I urge you to consistently upgrade your skills in order to move at the same pace with management.”
He explained that the Nigeria Immigration Service was saddled with the management of migration, thus it has taken necessary steps including deployment of technology in the discharge of its mandate.
According to him, “We strategically embarked on reforms targeted at enhancing migration management and service delivery. I like to state that Nigeria’s response to Migrant Smuggling has been broad and dynamic. The Service as the lead agency in the fight saw to the domestication of the relevant UN Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants, SOM, by Land, Sea and Air through galvanizing efforts that cumulated in the enactment of the Immigration Act (2015).
“This act domesticated relevant aspects of the Palermo Protocol that seek to suppress this ugly phenomenon and further equip the Service with relevant legal provisions to criminalize SOM; provide restitution for Objects of Smuggling and go after assets and properties of smugglers.”
Pursuant to this objective, the NIS boss stated that the Service established the Directorate of Migration, developed and launched, Standard Operating Procedures SOP, to incorporate collective and coordinated approach against SOM.
“Just recently, in July 2022 the Service deepened its efforts by constituting the Management Board of the Objects of Smuggling of Migrants Trust Fund which the Minister of Interior Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola inaugurated. With this development, the Service is now empowered to deepen its efforts at encouraging humane, orderly and safe migration but also deal decisively with migrant smugglers anywhere they are caught in the country.
“Just within this week we successfully changed the nomenclature of Anti-Human Trafficking Unit to Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Unit in line with our mandate.
“Our statutory mandate as both law enforcement and service delivery agency demands that we masterly deploy our best hands across our service and operational windows to ensuring that we regularly and consistently make enduring impressions on the minds of those we relate with. We are leaving no stone unturned in our pursuits to excellently discharge our mandate through priority attention given to human capacity development and timely promotion of Officers and Men.
“While the Service under my watch is gradually but consistently migrating our Passport issuing Centers both locally and in the diaspora to the enhanced e-Passport, we have also been able to transform the process of Passport application and issuance.
“This was made possible by the introduction of a queuing system that enables passport applicants to choose an interview date immediately payment is made on the application portal. This is helping management to regulate the passport process while also allowing passport applicants get an appointment date at their convenience.”
Also, Public Relations Officer of the NIS, Tony Akuneme was been promoted to the rank of Comptroller of Immigration.
Akuneme joined the service exactly 30 years ago as a Cadet Officer and has served in various formations including Lagos, Akwa Ibom, FCT, Nigeria High Commission in Canada and the Nigeria Diaspora Commission, among others.
A total number of 11 Comptrollers were promoted to Assistant Comptrollers General while 53 Deputy Comptrollers were elevated to Substantive Comptrollers.
