There are indications that the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) may be in for internal crisis if the authorities do not take urgent steps to rectify the issue of delayed promotion exercise affecting its senior cadre who were interviewed in November last year.
The bone of contention is that hundreds of the affected officers who attended the 2015 promotion examination are complaining that they are due for another promotion, but because the result of the last promotion examination is yet to be released, their fate hangs in the balance.
Armadanews.com gathered that the officers who partook in the promotion examination last year are insisting on the release of the result as well as on the payment of arrears of salary that ought to have been paid them if the result was released accordingly.
A senior immigration officer who is affected by last year’s promotion exercise insisted that the authorities are deliberately stalling their promotion thereby causing disharmony in the system.
Reminded that the Service may be delaying the result of the promotion exercise because it may not have money to back the elevation of officers to their new ranks, the officer said the authorities are aware that deserving personnel are not supposed to be stagnated on one position after a period of time according to civil service rules.
He maintained that if the authorities insist on imposing another promotion exercise on the officers who had already been tested and are awaiting the result, the backlash would be negative on the leadership of the Service.
Meanwhile, Armadanews.com can confirm that more than 1000 new recruits into the immigration who were affected by the last mass recruitment exercise that left some applicants dead have finally been “properly” interviewed by the authorities.
They were among those who got the nod of the Presidency under Goodluck Jonathan to be recruited into the Service to compensate the families of the applicants who lost their lives during the ill-fated Abba Moro planned recruitment exercise.
Initially, the affected candidates protested the plan by the current immigration authorities to subject them to another examination, claiming they had had one before.
But according to Armadanews.com findings, the applicants succumbed to pressure to retake the examination recently in line with the rules set fo0r them by the Service. The result is however yet to be released.