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Awaiting The Report Of Immigration Panel? By Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal

“The fact is that if the Honourable Minister was actually involved directly or indirectly in the job racketeering rocking the Nigeria Immigration Service, then the truth of what transpired would certainly be submerged, no matter anybody’s efforts to the contrary” – Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal.

“The fact is that if the Honourable Minister was actually involved directly or indirectly in the job racketeering rocking the Nigeria Immigration Service, then the truth of what transpired would certainly be submerged, no matter anybody’s efforts to the contrary” – Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal.



The foregoing statement summarizes the position taken by the present writer about six months back in the wake of the presidential directive to Mrs. Chinyere Rose Uzoma, the erstwhile Controller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service, compelling her to proceed on pre-retirement accumulated leave and the subsequent setting up of an investigative panel by the Honourable Minister of Interior, comrade Patrick Abba Moro, to probe her activities while in office over allegations of bias in the promotion and posting of immigration officers as well as the alleged recruitment of more than four thousand officers of the Service without recourse to due process, among other charges leveled against her by some her colleagues (see Daily Independent, January 24, 2013 under the rubric: Issues in the immigration investigation panel).

Though it does not fall within the purview of reasonable conclusion to begin to accuse this panel of failing to deliver in its assignment, yet there is hardly any tenable justification to be advanced by the Honourable Minister, comrade Abba Moro, in rationalizing the undue delay associated with making the report of this panel known to the public. Curiously, this is the sixth month since the setting up of this panel to look into the activities of Mrs. Rose Uzoma while in office. And up till now the public is yet to be briefed on all that transpired. Surely given that the Hon. Minister made the setting up of the investigative panel public, it is in the same vein incumbent on him to bring out the findings and recommendations of this body to the public domain. After all, the panel is not just a child of necessity but also was born as a result of public outcry.

Nevertheless, it is pertinent to state clearly that some people did in fact oppose the idea of the Minister being the one to set up this panel for some reasons. For instance, like I did ask, which is still my stand, given that there were initial media reports indicating that Mrs. Rose Uzoma was at loggerheads with the Honourable Minister, Comrade Abba Moro, over issues bordering on recruitment, promotion and posting of immigration officers which were all alleged to have caused a sort of serious power tussle between the duo prior to the coming of the sweeping presidential directive that eventually “ousted” Mrs. Uzoma, how then would the Minister be the same person to constitute a panel  to investigate the latter’s activities while in office? This is not only outrageous but equally abnormal considering that apart from the possibility of malicious distortion of facts geared towards indicting Mrs. Uzoma - especially bearing in mind that virtually all members of the panel appear to be the Minister’s subordinates - the fact that all the alleged offences took place under the watchful eyes of the Minister no longer qualified him as a disinterested party to constitute such a panel. More so, it is even funny that the Minister who ought to be in full picture of all the goings-on vis-a-vis the entire process of recruitment, promotion and posting of officers of Nigeria Immigration Service seemed to be somewhat out of the world of beat. In essence, for Comrade Moro to be unaware or even claim ignorance of all these happenings at the time leaves much to curiosity.

Also, bearing in mind that there is a Board of Civil Defence, Fire Service, Immigration and Prison Services saddled with the responsibilities of overseeing, deliberating and reaching decisions on matters relating to the welfare, recruitment, approval of promotion and posting of officers of these paramilitary bodies before actual implementation, it thus defies one’s understanding how Mrs. Uzoma had managed to allegedly succeed in recruiting, promoting and posting officers of the Service “arbitrarily”.

It is though granted that this could be part of what the panel’s report would be addressing or unraveling, there is no gainsaying that Nigerians deserve to know by now the outcome of this investigation. Needless to say that the release of the report of this probe for public consumption will not only make sense but help to correct the subsisting impression that the Minister himself and members of the Board of Civil Defence, Fire Service, Immigration and Prison Services, including members of the probe panel themselves, were all involved in the job racketeering scandal that rocked the Nigeria Immigration Service under the leadership of Mrs. Rose Uzoma. Besides, it is quite unfortunate that this report is taking donkey’s years to be released to the public in whose interest the panel was set up in the first place. Otherwise, one wonders why the Minister would set to investigate a matter bordering on allegations of extortion of money from job applicants by some unscrupulous elements allegedly operating within the circle of his jurisdiction and yet at the end of the day the general public would be denied access and/or the opportunity to know who did what, when, how and the stipulated sanctions to be meted to them.

Today Mr. David Shikfu Paradang has been appointed the substantive Contoller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service and it appears from all indications that the Ministry of Interior is somewhat relieved that this new development has at least availed it the opportunity to suppress the report of the immigration investigation panel. But be that as it may, it stands to test the logic of the issue for them (yes them) to counter that it is now wrong for anybody to conclude, to all intents and purposes, that comrade Abba Moro’s immigration investigation panel has ultimately reached its long awaited predictable end.

Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal,

A journalist, writes from Abuja,

via [email protected]

 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters

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