•Immigration officers
The director general of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dasuki Arabi, announced today, Friday, July 12, that after seventeen years of persistence, the government has resolved the outstanding severance benefits for 1,330 Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) officers who were disengaged during the 2006/2007 reform programme.
Speaking after the verification and payment exercise for the NIS-severed staff in Abuja, Arabi commended President Bola Tinubu’s administration for its unwavering commitment to addressing this long-standing issue, reports The Nation.
The Nigerian Immigration Service is one of over 250 federal parastatals affected by the severance policy of the 2006/2007 reform programme.
During this period, the NIS disengaged a total of 1,330 officers across various cadres and grade levels.
According to the DG, “This, did not go down well with the disengaged officers. Complaints, agitations, and petitions were raised to several quarters agitating for the reversal of the disengagement. When the reversal became impossible because it was a government policy that needed to be fulfilled and implemented for the good of the country, other agitations were again raised.
“Agitations such as effecting the salary scale of CONPASS as against HAPSS to be used as it was used for sister agencies such as Nigerian Customs Service and Nigerian Prisons Service. This further created more agitations and complaints. All efforts to resolve the problem became a hard nut to crack. The problem became a conundrum and lingered for a span of about seventeen (17) years without a resolve”.
The unrelenting efforts of the DG of BPSR, who was new to the problem, and other stakeholders such as the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Federal Civil Service Commission, Office of the Auditor General of the Federation and others culminated in the success of the exercise which we are presently celebrating as an achievement.
In 2023, the exercise began with a verification exercise on 27th November, this meeting was held because the payment of the disengaged officers which lingered for seventeen years had finally been made to all the officers who availed themselves for the exercise and were eventually verified. The records show that 885 officers were verified and subsequently paid their outstanding benefits.
