Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has declared that most of its’ services have been long commercialized and concessioned before the appointment of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as the Minister of Interior to oversee the activities of the agency.
NIS, in a signed statement on Sunday by it’s spokesman, Tony Akuneme said there was no truth in recent report in one of the nation’s major online news platform that after the minister had led the commercialization of some immigration services, he was planning to commercialise Nigeria’s resident permit processes few months to his leaving office.
The statement read that the attention of the NIS has been drawn to an online story titled “Months to tenure expiration, Aregbesola set to ‘commercialise Nigeria’s resident permit processes, others,” noting that in the story, the author has accused the minister of interior of commercializing some immigration services.
The statement added that: “Ordinarily, we would ignore this but for the need to correct some errors and in fact save the unsuspecting public from being misled, It is imperative to put matters in proper perspective viz:
“Already, many services of the NIS have long been commercialized and warehoused in very robust partnerships with internationally acclaimed professional service providers such as CONTEC, Newworks, IRIS, Greater Washington, OIS, and others.
“The Honourable Minister of Interior is not concessioning Residency permit processes but the process of issuing Expatriate Quotas which falls directly under his mandate. The Advert under reference is on concessioning of Expatriate quota and NOT immigration facilities. This is the crux of the matter and needs to be properly understood.
“The write up which tries to malign the person and office of the honourable minister equally tended to misinform the general public.
“The NIS, under the watch of Hon Minister Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has continued to reposition and rebrand itself, winning local and international accolades in the process, such as the board membership of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the 4th time back to back, seven times winner of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council Award, the Leadership newspaper Award on the Comptroller General of Immigration as the 2022 Public Service Man of the year, to mention just these few.”
The statement added that: “The NIS, under the purposeful supervision of the Honourable Minister, remains committed to serving Nigerians and has its doors open to do so all the time. The morale of our officers is at an all time high, with the spate of promotions and welfare packages .
“The public is therefore advised to discountenance the publication, while we equally wish to advise the author and others like him to always double check his facts before going to press.”
