Negative publications of NIS against Moro

The Special Assistant to the Minister of Interior on Immigration Matters, Mr. Ime Nta, has accused the Nigeria Immigration Service of orchestrating a negative media campaign against the Interior Minister,Abba Moro, on account of the deaths
of some applicants in the failed recruitment.

Nta stated that the alleged attack on Moro was “the handiwork of columnists within the NIS who are not comfortable with
good intensions of the Interior Minister to cleanse the NIS of its present rot.”

The aide in a statement in Abuja on Saturday explained that the attack on his boss was carried out to hinder the minister from flushing out officers with fake academic qualifications in the immigration service.

According to him, the move was also meant to frustrate Moro from probing the ongoing expatriate quota abuses in the NIS which he said had denied many Nigerians employment opportunities.

Nta who spoke against the backdrop of the silence of the Senate Committee which probed the recruitment fiasco, dismissed the
insinuation that the Senate had swept the issue under the carpet.

He noted that the upper legislative chamber is an independent arm of government with the capacity to address the issue in
question.

He said, “The ongoing orchestrated media campaign against the Interior Minister is the handiwork of columnists within the NIS who are not comfortable with the good intensions of the Interior Minister to cleanse the NIS of its present rot in view of the ongoing academic verification exercise aimed at flushing out officers with fake academic qualifications and the ongoing expatriate abuses which has denied many Nigerians job opportunities.

“Let us understand what the Minister was trying to achieve by recruiting for the NIS in a transparent and open manner and
support him to perfect it and entrench it in our way of doing things and Nigerian society will be better for it.”

Nta, who attributed the ill–fated immigration recruitment exercise to what he described as operational failure, commended the promise by the Federal Government to assist the families of the bereaved by offering employments to some members of their families as well as the injured.

He assured Nigerians that President Goodluck Jonathan would keep to his promise of giving jobs to the families of those who
lost their lives during the incident.

But the Immigration Service Public Relations Officer, Emeka Obua, in a reaction, said he would not dignify Nta with a response, adding that the NIS was more concerned with re-engineering and transforming the service.

He described Nta’s allegation as a distraction, noting that the minister’s aide should mention the names of those behind the negative media report against Moro if he was sure of his facts.

Obua said, “We are focused on the directives of Mr. President to re-engineer, re-focus and transform the Immigration service. We don’t want to over-flog the issues (of the failed recruitment) because we don’t want any distraction.

“We don’t want to join issues wit Nta. Is he the Media Adviser to the Minister? Is he the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior? The minister has a media spokesperson, a seasoned journalist, so we won’t join issues with him. If he has his facts, he should mention the names of those behind the alleged negative reports against his boss.”