Corruption and the Nigeria Immigration Service

By; Hassan Afegbua

Corruption is one of the most disturbing challenges confronting Nigeria today. Corruption according to B.A Garner is “the act of doing something with intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty”. Corruption has become an incurable disease that has eaten deep into the fabrics of all institutions and government agencies. In our daily life activities, we witness one form of corruption to another. Despite the claim that we have many philosophers, academia, professors, intellectuals, pastors and the Imams, the act of corruption has grossly eroded our entire life without meaningful solution to the scourge. Our leaders, who should have lead by example by doing the right things are the notorious and strongest victims of corruption and it is more worrisome when one take cognizance of the fact that those who we think will fight the scourge are proponents of it due to their illicit acts in their places of work and worship. Corruption is a problem that has deeply affected our lives and it has negatively impacted in the underdevelopment of our great country.

Corruption can be manifested through several methods; it could be political, material or financial. Corruption has taken place when a candidate influenced his admission into the university through a corruptive means.  Lecturers/teachers who collect money from students to upgrade their grades have committed a corruptive act. An applicant who paid for a job opening in order to get employed has also committed a corruptive act. Our leaders who steal our money in the name of governance are also victims of corruption. Pastors and Imams who uses the church or mosque as a money making venture have also committed an act of corruption.

Having said this, nothing is as more disturbing than the just concluded e-recruitment by the Nigeria Immigration Services (NIS). Let it be understood here that the Nigeria Immigration Service is a federal government parastatal under the Ministry of Interior supervise by Comrade Aba Moro, the minister of interior. The e-recruitment process was an online based platform where thousands of applicants are required to pay N1,000 into the recruiting firm’s account as a requisite for the application process to be completed. This process seemed to be convenient for most applicants who have long waited to get employed while others including (this writer) frowned at the process because of the introduction of application fee. I strongly believe that with the introduction of application fee, corruption has been introduced into the system and the system will produce employees that are incompetent, ineffective and clueless. Some of the applicants might also have paid more than the required fee due to the urge and yearning to get employed. But why should the Minister of Interior, Comrade Aba Moro allow the recruiting firm to bill each applicant N1,000 for the application process to be completed? Why should an applicant pay N1,000 for a job he or she is not sure of getting? Will the N1,000 fee be refunded to those applicants who at the end not recruited because there were those who struggled before they could get the N1,000?

I feel pained when I read the interview granted by the minister in THE NEWS Magazine on 28^th October, 2013 when he was asked about the N1,000 applicants are paying before they can access the portal to file in their applications. Hear him; “what is happening is that the consulting firm that has been charged with the responsibility of processing applications online is charging applicants N1,000 for the processing of their application”. This is a confirmation that the minister was debriefed before the consulting firm introduced the application fee. This also goes to mean that the recruiting firm has collected money for the contract from two sources; from the applicants and the Ministry of Interior who awarded the contract. Comrade Aba Moro and the recruiting firm have by their actions committed what Dennis F. Thompson of Harvard University would call political and individual corruption. Political corruption, Thompson stressed, is “the use of power by government officials for illegitimate gain while individual corruption occurs when an institution or its officials receive a benefit that does not serve the institution and provides a service through relationships external to the institution”. Hence, the minister and the recruiting firm deserve to be sanctioned.

Again, the minister also has this to say in the same interview, “….I have given assurance to Nigerians that if we catch anybody demanding and accepting money for jobs, if the person is an official of the ministry, the person will be sanctioned according to the extant regulations guiding the discipline in the ministry. If the person is an outsider, we would certainly hand over the person to the police for prosecution.”

Now, to test the efficacy of the above statement made by the minister, the recruiting firm and in fact the minister deserves to be sanctioned by appropriate authorities as a corrective measure since the minister is part and parcel of the ministry while the recruiting firm is an outsider. The minister has not only succeeded in conniving with the recruiting firm to defraud applicants but also introduced a negative tradition into the system which subsequent ministers will follow suit, which will in turn increase the level of corruption in the system. Additionally, those who will be employed at the end will put possible effort to extort money indiscriminately from applicants seeking for international passport beyond the usual amount for procuring a passport having in mind that after all, they paid before they were employed. In fact, many of them will not process the documents on their table until the owner comes to settle them financially or through other means before the documents would be treated. Nothing goes for nothing!

Comrade Aba Moro has set a very bad standard here as a recruitment requirements. For him to have allowed the recruiting firm to obtain N1,000 from applicants, justify the widely heard view that the ministry of interior under his supervision is highly corrupt. If the minister succeeds in this misadventure, other ministers supervising other parastatals will also introduce such a tradition into their system and it will go on and on. Hence, I will implore President Goodluck Jonathan to urgently look into this matter. Let the application fee be refunded to the applicants. Let those who have the qualification deserve the job.

Hassan Afegbua, is a student at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) writes via [email protected]