Immigration recruitment: Staff shortage elicits calls for employment of new officers

Five months after an attempt to recruit new officers into the NIS ended in a tragedy where some applicants died in various centres across the country, concerns have been raised that the NIS was understaffed and new officers desperately needed.

On March 15, the service conducted a nationwide recruitment that claimed the lives of about 20 applicants while several others were injured, due to overcrowding and shoddy preparations that culminated into a stampede in some centres.

The Comptroller-General of the service, David Parradang, who made the recent call for the recruitment of more officers expressed concern over the unmanned 1,400 illegal border routes in the country as against the only 84 approved land routes.

Speaking on Friday in Abuja at the 2014 Comptroller-General’s annual conference and stakeholder’s forum in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the service, Parradang said: “NIS presently has a total of 22,321 staff and the enormous statutory obligations of the NIS coupled with emerging migration trends and trajectories make this number of personnel grossly inadequate.

“The un-demarcated and poorly marked borders make settlement of people in border communities intertwined and stringent control by the service apparently difficult”.


Minister of Interior, Abba Moro also echoed Parradang’s concern. “The fact that we have fewer than 23,000 immigration officers manning our very long stretch of border means there is need to add more men into the service.

“We owe Nigeria and Nigerians the duty of securing our borders in spite of the security challenges the country is facing now,” he said.

Parradang also called for the construction of border plazas equipped with radars, sensors, cargo and document scanners and modern border patrol aircraft, boats, vehicles and communication gadgets.
He said: “Improved training and re-training of our personnel is also required to enable them cope with the dynamics of modern migration management. Given the enabling environment and the necessary support, the service can be placed on a better pedestal to guarantee a more improved performance,” he said.