The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has appealed to the Senate to approve improved conditions of service, competitive remuneration and regular promotion for service personnel.

The acting comptroller general of the NIS, Caroline Adepoju, appealed during an interactive meeting with the Senate Committee on Interior.

Ms Adepoju said the NIS conditions of service were supposed to be at par with other sister agencies, especially concerning remuneration.

She, however, lamented the glaring disparity on what its personnels received compared to other sister agencies, saying this was discouraging and demoralising to personnels of the service. 

“Our conditions of service for NIS personnel, in terms of remuneration, we are expected to be at par with the Customs Service, Nigeria Police Force, but our remunerations are poor and can not actually take us home,” said Ms Adepoju. 

Ms Adepoju also decried the non-regular promotion status of its officers, noting that many of the personnel had stagnated on a particular grade level without promotion for many years.

The immigration boss also called for improved funding and logistics for the NIS to properly executive its mandate, like the provision of E-gate.

According to her, there is a need to increase the number of its personnel for adequate manning of the airports, sea and land borders.

“Our promotion is slow, and this breeds demoralisation; people are demoralised, we need our promotion evaluative system and eligibility to be reviewed.

“We need to create vacancies to remove stagnation among the personnel of NIS.

“We need better office and residential accommodations both in our states and border security; we need logistics to aid our border management, both land, air and the sea,” she said. 

Ms Adepoju said that despite the challenges, the management was also poised to and committed to improving its service delivery mandate in line with the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu.

Ja’afar Mohammed, the secretary, the Board of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Nigeria Correctional Services, and Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps,  corroborated Ms Adepoju’s submission.

He explained that the board has had historical challenges, saying that the board had existed on an ad-hoc basis.

The secretary said the board did not have a comprehensive record of employees of NIS to generate eligibility status on issues relating to promotion and retirement

The committee chairman, Senator Adams Oshiomole, said the interaction, which was at the instance of the committee, was to have first-hand information and an overview of the challenges faced by the service.

He said this enabled the committee to intervene, support and evolve measures to solve the issues.

(NAN)