Foreign posting: Aggrieved NIS officers drag CG Kemi Nandap to industrial court

Nathan Tamarapreye, Yenagoa

Some 80 officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service affected by the halt in the posting to foreign missions have threatened to drag the Comptroller-General, Kemi Nandap to court over alleged violation of administrative procedure and their fundamental rights.

The affected NIS officers, numbering about 80, are opposing instructions contained in a letter dated 5th of March,2024 with reference number NIS/CGI/FD/11/119 and titled ‘RE: Posting of Immigration Attaches to foreign mission’, directing them to return their posting letters earlier issued to them.

The letter by GC Didel, ACG (I/C HRM) directed the officers to return posting letters on or before March 9, 2024.

Many of the affected officers are shocked by the reversal of their postings to Nigerian Embassies abroad as Immigration Attaches and it is coming a few weeks after they were officially informed of their postings.

The officers were posted to different Nigerian embassies in Europe, the United States, Asia and African countries and they have all received 3-week training at the Nigerian Immigration Headquarters in Abuja.

While many of them have returned their posting letters, others have expressed fears that the action of the newly appointed Comptroller-General, Kemi NANDAP was borne out of the need to compensate her loyalists rather than sustain the former Comptroller-General’s loyalists within the service.

Some of the aggrieved officers, despite the order to keep the issue from the media, decried high-handedness and lack of administrative competence for a newly appointed Comptroller General to start dabbling into administrative postings without studying the system.

They threatened to ensure that she gets her fair share of crisis, claiming that she was appointed as CG despite her glaring inexperience.

“This is the same Comptroller while serving in Plateau who kept an American woman in Jos illegally during her service as Comptroller by giving her a one-year extension on a business visa without following due process.

“The extension given to the American woman was above her authorization as a Comptroller then, but today, she wants to prove she is a saint and a performer,” One of the officers who craved anonymity alleged

“We are going to expose her activities both official and private as she wants to deny us our rights. We are in the Industrial Court and the Minister who is now denying knowledge will go into another scandal, he has not yet cleared his record on Beta Edu’s gate. Now, he is Minister of Immigration, we are ready for them,” another officer who spoke under anonymity threatened.

“It should be noted that she controversially came into office and the minister paid each of the retired DCG, N20 million each to settle them as they were prematurely retired.

“We are not returning our posting letters, let them do their worst, we are in court with them. Nigeria Immigration Service needs National Assembly intervention by asking for the confirmation not just presidential approval of an abetter of an illegal American lady who is still in Jos as a nuisance and public charge.”