The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, and the Acting Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, Isah Jere Idris, have respectively reiterated the role of the agency in border management and security.
Aregbesola and Idris spoke on Tuesday at the passing out parade for participants of the 47th Superintendent Basic Course of Nigeria Immigration Service at the NIS training school in Kano.
Aregbesola told the newly inducted 548 cadets that the “overriding reason for their employment is the security of Nigeria’s borders.”
The NIS public relations officer, Amos Okpu, an Assistant Comptroller of Immigration, made this disclosure in a statement issued on Wednesday and made available to journalists.
Delivering his message to the cadets, the minister said the integrity of Nigeria’s borders was the responsibility of the NIS, and urged the new recruits to have it in their minds that securing Nigeria against trespassers, aggressors and interlopers was their primary responsibility.
The minister who was the parade reviewing officer, was represented by a Commissioner at the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board, CDCFIB, Emmanuel Bassey, a major general, retired.
His words: “Your engagement into the Nigeria Immigration Service reaffirms the government’s commitment to strengthening our internal security of which our borders are an integral part of. Without secure borders, no security measure can work. External criminally minded persons can infiltrate the country and escape at will, if the borders are not well secured. Deadly diseases are spread also from one country to the other through cross border movements. This is why national borders were shut in the wake of the outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2020, completely grounding the aviation industry and other modes of international transportation.
“Even the economic security of a people is threatened when borders are not properly manned.
“As you have been taught, your main mission is to man the nation’s borders. Every other assignment is secondary. This must settle in your innermost being and resonate in your archetype: to keep the bad people away from our country and encourage the good people to come in. No harm must befall our nation on your watch.”
He urged them to be disciplined, even as he quoted the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, that “the strength of any military organisation lies not in its size but in its discipline.”
On his part, the Acting Comptroller General, who has consistently emphasised the massive number of illegal routes to the country, said the adoption of technology by his agency remained the best strategy to adequately man the border lines.
Idris, who encouraged the new cadets to improve their technical and technology skills, said the ongoing deployment of the electronic-border management system would soon phase out the challenges currently identified with the system.
He said: “We are retooling our border security structures following the adoption of the eBorder project which would demand massive deployment of human and ICT logistics for effective border security operations across control posts.
“We shall complement this with reinvigorated patrols at the border flanks with the aim of keeping away undesirable migrants. As you graduate out of this institution today, I assure you that you will be needed at the forward operations bases and the border control posts to offer your contributions to our fatherland.”
Idris added that the agency was also upgrading the combat readiness of the border patrol personnel “especially with the recent training exercise for 250 personnel in Sokoto State.”
He said many of them had been successfully deployed to border formations across the country.
“Just as I mentioned earlier, we are placing huge premiums on border security and to this end I have commenced operational visits to our border control posts with my recent visit to some of our blue border formations in Akwa Ibom State. We shall continue with this effort especially with the e-Border project,” he added.
Meanwhile, the officials also advised the new cadets to shun corrupt practices and be hardworking.
They said as the agency valued and rewarded integrity and commitment to work, it did not spare the rod when its men were found wanting.
The Acting Comptroller General said: “It is instructive to inform you that we have strong consequence management mechanisms in place to attend to all forms of conducts/activities. While good conducts and performances will be handsomely rewarded, poor conducts and other offences against discipline will receive their due sanctions in line with extant public service rules and paramilitary ethics.”
He, therefore, urged the cadets to shun all forms of sharp practices and corruption.
