The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts Committee, PAC, weekend queried the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, for engaging consultants to handle visa and passport issues at the nation’s missions abroad.
The committee said it was unnecessary and counter-productive to the growth of economy of the country.
In a session with the Acting Comptroller General of the Service, Idris Jere, who was represented by an Assistant Comptroller General, Budget, Olubusola Fashakin on the heels of a query from the office of the Auditor General of the Federation to the NIS, the committee rejected the idea.
Wole Oke, the chairman of the committee, therefore, summoned the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, and Acting CG of Immigration to appear before it on Wednesday to address the issue.
He said: “We visited your embassies and the Auditor General raised some queries on some missions, so we visited South Africa and Atlanta, US. We discovered that Nigeria is losing serious money through your operations. You engaged consultants to manage your passports and visas platform.
“In our opinion, NIS personnel were trained to manage visa and passport matters. That is your core mandate. So on what basis are you now engaging consultants? So, what are you people doing in the offices.
“Your men are idle, roaming the streets, this is not acceptable to the Parliament, something has to be done to stop the economic wastage.
“I give you a scenario. In South Africa, out of a revenue of $213, a consultant took $90. Out of that $213, only $15 came to the Nigerian purse. That particular consultant is managing 14 countries and Nigeria is bleeding through this window and we would continue to borrow money to finance our budget and one person is sitting down in the corner of his room and making $90 on each applicant. It would not continue.
“The Minister of Interior, the Permanent Secretary, the CG of the Service are to appear before this committee to speak to this issue.
“You have a letter from this committee asking you to furnish it with the particulars of all the consultants you have engaged and the agreement you signed with them. Nigeria is bleeding through this window
“What are your personnel doing? Why did we train you and engage you? Your personnel is idle, roaming the streets, sitting down in the offices, and consultants are doing your job and taking away our money.
“The Minister of Interior, the Permanent Secretary, the CG have to come with the agreement you signed and give reasons that they have to deny personnel trained and employed to do this work.
‘’You are also exposing Nigerians to risk. We owe Nigerians a high duty of care and we would discharge it.”
The lawmakers also directed the Immigration Service to provide the committee with all the procurement records for utilization of money collected through service-wide votes and deployed for capital purposes from 2013 to 2018, saying it was necessary to clear the irregularities found in their books.
Source: Vanguard
