By Linus Oota
Abuja
The last may not have been heard of the controversial recruitment exercise of the Nigerian Immigration Service, as the House of Representatives’ Committee on Federal Character moves to halt the recruitment.
This came on the heels of a meeting between the House of Representatives panel and Comptroller General of Immigration, which ended in deadlock last week at the National Assembly.
The bone of contention was the inability of the Comptroller General of Immigration, Mr. David Shikfu Parradang, and his team to convince the committee on how the service intends to ensure that salaries of the newly recruited personnel would be paid, given the state of the economy and the fact that there is no budgetary provision for it.
Also miffed by the inability of the Immigration Service, headed by its comptroller general to convince the parliamentarians in concrete terms how the service intends to offset the over N6 billion cumulative fee of the N1,000 collected by the service from applicants during the aborted exercise as well as not first seeking approval of the Federal Character Committee of the parliament, the chairman of the committee, Hon. Idris Ahmed, ordered the immigration comptroller to return with answers to all the issues raised today (Monday).
Committee members expressed dissatisfaction over what they regarded as “impunity of the highest order and insincerity” on the part of the federal government, for going ahead with the exercise without budgetary provisions and clearance from the Federal Character Committee.
The chairman was particularly unhappy that the Immigration Service and the Ministry of Interior could not refund the N6 billion realized from the sale of forms to jobless Nigerians, yet it is going ahead with the exercise without following the due process. “Things must be done in a transparent and fair manner,” the chairman said.
The committee chairman, after due consultations with members, ordered the immigration comptroller to come back today (Monday) and convince the committee why the exercise should not be put on hold.
