Immigration boss vows to fight recruitment scam, beef up border security

The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, David S. Paradang, has again expressed the resolve of the Service under his watch to beef up security across the nation’s porous borders, with a view to ensuring that only foreigners with genuine travel documents are allowed into the country.
Paradang, who was recently appointed following the sack of Rose Chinyere Uzoma for alleged indiscipline, high handedness and corruption, also renewed his pledge to fight the issue of corruption among the personnel.
Speaking with State House correspondents on Saturday night after paying a condolence visit on the First Family over the death of Mrs. Jonathan’s step-mother, Charity Oba, the CGI said non-Nigerians who reside in the country are also being monitored closely.
His words: “The first thing we intend to do is to make sure we have better borders, better management of our borders.
“That is the number one issue for now.
“Border patrolling.
“We intend to do it in a new way.
“In such a way that we can account for anybody and make sure our borders are tighter.
“The second thing is to make sure we have a very good internal control and monitoring of people who are non Nigerians in this country.
“Those are the two mandates of the Immigration Service that I intend to pursue with all the vigour that I have.”
Asked what was being done to address the issue of porous borders, especially in the northern part of the country, he said: “This is an issue that we have studied very well and we know the feelings of Nigerians concerning our borders.
“We are not going to do it the same way it was being done before.
“We have a new way of doing border patrolling now.
“We are going to make sure we increase first of all the number of our control posts so that the distance will be reduced.
“We are going to increase on our border patrol basics and we are going to use sustainable technology to be able to pick out people that are crossing the borders.
“Then we will have a guard inside that will be able to monitor people.
“If you escape, the guard will catch you inside.”
Paradang also vowed to rid the Service of corruption associated with recruitment.
He said: “We cannot afford to have corruption in the recruitment exercise of the Service.
“When the foundation is really bad, the whole thing will collapse.
“We intend to make sure recruitment is open, fair and open to all Nigerians.
“All parts of the country are supposed to be represented and they must be represented.
“The system will be cleaned and you will see it and you will confirm it when I meet with you next time.”