By David Owei,Bayelsa
Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, has urged the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and other federal agencies to recalibrate their recruitment policies to promote fairness, justice and equity in line with the principles of federalism.

Governor Diri, stated this when the Assistant Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Zone G, Mrs Abolupe Oladoyin Bewaji, paid a courtesy visit to Government House, Yenagoa, on Monday.

The Governor who was represented by his deputy, Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, decried the subsisting practice where job recruitment at the federal level is based on the number of local government areas in each of the 36 states in the country, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

He lamented that Bayelsa has always been short-changed whenever employment slots were allocated across the various states of the federation as it has only eight local government areas, which is the fewest in the country.

Describing the policy as unjust, undemocratic and skewed against the foremost oil and gas producing state, Governor Diri stressed the need for federal government to urgently address the anomaly with a view to giving Bayelsa a befitting sense of belonging.

He also called on the Nigeria Immigration Service to make Bayelsa a center for the printing of passports to save the manhours and other resources currently expended for producing the document outside the state.

The Bayelsa helmsman who commended the Minister of Interior and the Comptroller General of Immigration for some of the ongoing innovations and reforms in the Service in recent years, he pledged his administration’s preparedness to collaborate with the NIS to achieve set goals.

His words: “First of all, I like to commend the Minister of Interior as well as the Comptroller General of Immigration for the innovations and reforms which we are now seeing, especially in the area of issuing of visas and passports and diplomatic reciprocity.

“Clearly, we can see that you are doing fairly well on the land. But I think you need to do much more on the waterways because a lot of people are also coming into the country through the waterways..

“As a state, we are willing and ready to collaborate with you to carry out effective services in the state. We will be happy to support you provide the marine unit of immigration.

“Let me also use this opportunity to raise some of our concerns. First, we want you to urgently address the issue of printing passports outside our state. We want the production of the passports to be done here to reduce the manhour and other costs.

“We are also concerned about the way job recruitment is being done in the Immigration and other federal agencies. We are being short-changed because most of the time it is done based on the number of local government areas in the states.

“So if you are giving 10 employment slots to each local government in the country, there are states that will get more than 400 or 300 slots, while Bayelsa will have only 80 because it has only 8 local government areas. So where is the fairness?

“That is why I’m appealing for some kind of concession. Bayelsa should be given additional slots whenever you carry out recruitment your recruitment exercises.”

Earlier, the Assistant Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Zone G, Headquarters, Mrs Abolupe Oladoyin Bewaji, said she was in Bayelsa to seek areas of collaboration with the state government that will be mutually beneficial.

According to her, Bayelsa State is a significant contributor to the economy of Nigeria that deserves special attention, assuring that the Immigration Service will continue to be committed to professionalism and patriotism in their partnership with the state.

ACG Bewaji, who appreciated the Bayelsa Government for its support to security agencies, identified border security, community engagement as well as seamless issuance of passports and visas as some of the possible areas of collaboration between the NIS and the state.

The Assistant Comptroller General of Immigration of Zone G, comprising Bayelsa, Edo, Delta, Enugu and Anambra states was accompanied by some top ranking officers of the zone, including the state Comptroller of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Mr Festus Atteh, on the courtesy visit.