Immigration warns officials against arms mishandling, urges e-migrant compliance

• Zamfara command headquarters gulps N192 billion

The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Muhammad Babandede, has warned officers of the service against mishandling of arms.

He issued the warning at the weekend in Kano during the third conversion and upgrading of 509 officers to the superintendent cadre.

His words: “As an armed service, we cannot afford to be careless with weapons, hence all officers of the service will undergo drug test beginning with me to determine our mental and psychological stability.

“We shall not dismiss anyone at first discovery, but try to rehabilitate. If the fellow continues unrepentantly, administrative procedures will be followed and appropriate sanctions applied.”

He advised the officers to put into good use what they have been thought.

The Immigration boss also assured Nigerians that the visa on arrival policy for Africans was a huge opportunity for visitors coming for legitimate businesses to thrive in countries other than theirs.

Besides, the service’s Cross River command has called on foreign migrants, who are yet to be captured in its database, to do so before the January 2020 deadline.

The Comptroller of NIS in the state, Okey Ezugwu, made the appeal during the end-of-year party held at the command’s headquarters to celebrate the year’s activities in Calabar.

He said the Federal Government gave six months for the migrants to register for free in the NIS database so that they could be accounted for.

Ezugwu stated that the command could not guarantee the stay of any migrant that fails to register within the stipulated period in the state.

Moreover, the recently commissioned immigration command in Zamfara gulped N192, 404,794.05.

The information was contained in a statement issued by the orgaanisation’s public relations officer, Sunday James, in Abuja.

He said the command was the sixth of such facility to be commissioned in the past three years across the federation.

The five others were located in Plateau, Akwa Ibom, Kano, Abia, and Jigawa states.