Moro moves to reposition Immigration for competitiveness

THE Minister of Interior, Mr Abba Moro, has called on all stakeholders to make relevant contributions towards making the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) a world class migration management agency.

Moro said this when he inaugurated projects at the service headquarters on Tuesday in Abuja.

The projects were one data centre, a queuing system and two security bollards.

He said that the support would enable the service compete favourably with similar agencies across the world.

The minister said that the data centre would guarantee prompt resolution of challenges being encountered with the online platform for payment of immigration services.

According to Moro, the queuing system was installed by the Online Integrated Solution Service (OIS) as part of its corporate social responsibility work to provide convenient environment for passport applicants.

“This will provide a convenient environment for the teeming passport applicants and assist the service to sustain the tempo of seamless and timely service delivery.

“The automatic rising bollards was constructed by the service as a security measure to enhance effective control of entry and exit of vehicles around the headquarters” he said.

Moro said that the ministry had consistently provided an enabling environment for the service and its technical partners to undertake reforms in the border patrol unit and passport administration.

Mr David Parradang, the Comptroller-General of the service said the rationale behind the e-payment policy was to block all avenues of revenue leakages and enforce accountability and probity in all government transactions.

He said that due to the adoption of the e-payment system by the service internally generated revenue had increased considerably.

“In 2014, the sum of over N9 billion was generated locally as revenue accruing from e-passport while the immigration desk abroad generated over 15 million dollars.

“Most of our initiatives are customer driven and in our quest to uphold the precepts of Servicom and the transformation agenda of the Federal Government” Parradang said.

He assured Nigerians that the service would continue to strive to provide timely world class services and the needed enabling environment for its customers. (NAN)