There are strong indications that the relationship between the Minister of Interior, Comrade Patrick Abba Moro, and the Nigerian Immigration Services (NIS) Comptroller General, Mr. David Shikfu Parradang, may have gone from bad to worse in recent times.
The bitterness which started during the ill-fated NIS recruitment exercise that claimed several lives, got worse when the National Assembly probed the incident and the immigration management allegedly heaped the blame for the failure of the exercise on the ministry. Since then, both the minister and the comptroller general were said to be not in talking terms and avoided each other in the public as much as possible to prevent observers from noticing the cold relationship. This weekend, however, the Special Assistant to the Minister of Interior on Immigration Matters, Mr. Ime Unaowo Nta, accused the Nigerian Immigration Services (NIS) management of wagging a media campaign against the minister to scuttle the ongoing verification of the academic qualifications of some immigration officers accused of working with fake certificates.
A statement signed by Mr. Nta described as untrue reports that the Interior minister deliberately planned the failure of the last aptitude test organised for applicants seeking immigration recruitment.
The statement said: “Fifth columnists within the NIS who are not comfortable with the good intension of the Interior minister to cleanse the NIS of its present rot are working against the ongoing academic verification exercise aimed at flushing out officers with fake academic qualifications.”
Nta urged Nigerians to see the current administration as a government with a human face and people-oriented policies taking into cognizance “the palliative measures reeled out by the Federal Government.”
“It must be noted that Nigerians with good sense of history will also recall that in 2008, a similar scenario played out during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, where Major General Godwin Abbe was Interior Minister and Mr. Udeh was Comptroller General of Immigration, where over 17 lives were lost with the highest casualties in Enugu under the watchful eyes of the current comptroller general.,” he alleged. He attributed the ill-fated immigration recruitment exercise to operational failure and commended the measures taken by the Federal Government to assist the families of the bereaved by offering employment to them and those injured. The special assistant assured Nigerians that President Goodluck Jonathan will certainly keep his words to give jobs to family members of those who lost their lives during the recruitment exercise.
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