Nigerian Immigration Service Denies Recruiting Any Personnel Into The Service.

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has denied recruiting any personnel into the Service of recent.
The Comptroller General of the Service, Martin Abeshi made this denial while speaking at the weekend during a World Press Conference on the forthcoming CG of Immigration annual conference and Stakeholders interactive forum.

He insisted that if the NIS was to carry out any recruitment exercise, due process will be followed, including the announcement of vacancies in the national dailies.
"As a public servant, before you recruit, first you have to go to the federal ministry of establishment to ask for vacancy and must ensure that those vacancies are budgeted. You have to go to put adverts on National dailies telling the general public about the recruitment.
"If this Service has not advertised for recruitment, then it means we have not recruited anybody," he said.
About the suspended recruitment exercise last year, Abeshi said he was not in the position to address the issue, saying all inquiries should be directed to "the government".
Daily Trust had reported on Wednesday that the NIS was secretly recruiting hundreds of personnel into the Service with some of them presently undergoing training exercise in its training school in Kano.


Ekpedeme on a different page
Contrary to Abeshi's denial, the spokesman of the NIS, King Ekpedeme in an earlier interview with Daily Trust, while confirming that the Service had engaged new personnel, said the number was not up to 500 as rumoured.
"I am not aware that we have up to 400 to 500 recruits undergoing training in Kano...I am aware we should be talking about 200 or thereabouts."
While insisting that the exercise was not a fresh recruitment but a replacement exercise, Ekpedeme said "because the government felt it was not a fresh recruitment, they gave us some waivers such that vacancies should not be publicised, waivers such that it would not pass through some certain agencies."


Moro lied
Also, Abeshi differed on the claim by former minister of Interior, Abba Moro who was speaking before the House of Representatives committee on Interior last week, that the Immigration Service lacked the capacity to produce International passports for Nigerians
"I want to say the former minister is entitled to his opinion but I will also add that while he was the Minister of Interior for almost four years, if he said we lacked capacity to produce international passport, what did he do about that for the period he was in charge?
"So, I don't believe that we don't have the capacity to produce International passport. We have more than enough staff here that can produce if funds are given to us," the NIS boss said.
Abeshi who assured Nigerians that criminal minded migrants were not getting access into the country any longer, also claimed the NIS was well equipped to fish out all illegal immigrants already in the country.


CG conference
Meanwhile, Abeshi said the CG conference which will hold in Lafia, Nasarawa State between 6th and 8th April, 2016, will touch on the global migrant crisis among other topical issues.
The British High Commissioner to Nigeria; Paul Arkwright and Head of EU delegation to Nigeria; Ambassador Michel Arrion will present papers at the event.