Tunde Olukoya
Hon. Olubunmi Tunji Ojo in a bid to convince gullible Nigerians that his much celebrated reforms in Nigeria Immigration Service embarked on an unscheduled working visit to the FCT Command Passport Office at Abuja where he was seen on video widely circulated on the social media emotionally abusing officers and men of the office. He was seen accusing them of tactically failing to attend to the Passport applicants under the guise of poor internet network services.
Hon Tunji Ojo since his assumption of office has been carrying out campaign of blackmail against the officers of Nigeria Immigration Service branding them rogues and criminals. The style of leadership and human resources management employed by the Hon Minister defies every known theory of motivation of the workforce.
The Minister conduct in the viral video is condemnable, lacks respect for uniform ethics, and national embarrassment. It is likened to a Pharasee who is removing dust in one’s eyes while carrying a log on his own eyes.
The Minister cannot claim ignorance of the fact that his reforms in NIS are not working. It is a known fact that the internet backbone being used by the Passport offices are sim-enable routers that are not up to 5G networks which connects the passport office to their remote servers at the production centres and which fluctuates whenever there are weather changes. Clusters of Passport offices (some cases 5 states) are connected to a production center and when there are power failure or network issues at the production center the entire passport offices in the five states will be shut down.
Will he Hon Minister also claim ignorance of the fact that the Immigration website recently encountered down time making it difficult for payments to be made during the day time except one wakes up late at night to do the payment?
Since taking up the production of Cerpac card has the Minister been able to produce cards for the expatriates? Is he Minister not aware of how difficult it is for Nigerians in diaspora to receive their passports which he is producing from Nigeria?
Is the Minister not aware of the difficulties encountered by foreigners applying for eVisa?
Is it also the fault of Immigration officers that his much advertised central Passport production has not kicked off? Is it the fault of the Immigration Officers that he has not been able to solve the problem of scarcity of passport booklets?
Can the Hon Minister be transparent enough to tell Nigerians how much the passport offices receives as subvention to run the office and how he finances the internet network services in all the passport offices?
Is the Minister not aware that his portals for various immigration services functions effectively only at nights?
Can he be transparent enough to tell Nigerians how effective is the passport delivery system? Can he be transparent enough to tell Nigerians who takes the extra charges of #4000 and #7000 in each passport and about $140 in Cerpac?
When Col Ahmed Ali rtd. took over Customs he didn’t reform Customs by bullying officers but rather he worked on the welfare of custom officers and got Government to adequately remunerate he customs officers providing logistics and infrastructural support to the customs officers and this gave rise to increase in revenue for customs. Can Tunji Ojo tell Nigerians how he provides uniform materials for the officers?
Can he tell Nigerians what support he has given to Immigration Officers who are being killed or injured in JTF operations in North East and other operations in other parts of the country? as well as at the various borders in the country? What was his effort in securing release of abducted officers of the Service in Benue and other states?
Apart from hijacking Immigration duties and giving to surrogate companies without adequate manpower what training program has he executed for the officers and men of the Service in the areas of ICT and effective management to boost the performance of officers?
I wish to call on Investigative Journalists to carry out an investigation on the reforms by Olubumi Tunji Ojo with a view to unraveling the truth or else he will run NIS to a halt.
