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The Comptroller-General of Nigerian Immigration Service, Chukwurah Joseph Udeh reveals the circumstances in which he emerged the NIS boss, his vision for the service and his effort at making it corruption-free in this interview with OLUSOLA FABIYI
The temptation I get from women is much. They will come and line up here. Of course if you admire me, I admire you, but anything beyond that, me I no dey -Comptroller General of Nigerian Immigration Service
The Comptroller-General of Nigerian Immigration Service, Chukwurah Joseph Udeh reveals the circumstances in which he emerged the NIS boss, his vision for the service and his effort at making it corruption-free in this interview with OLUSOLA FABIYI
As a young immigration officer, did you ever think you would one day be named the Comptroller General of Immigrations?
Honestly, I never dreamt of becoming the CG. But as a professional, everybody's aspiration is to get to the top echelon of the job. But I did not think of becoming the CG even though I had what it takes in terms of education and training. But working to be in this office? Never.
So you would say it is sheer fortune that gave you this job?
Honestly, I will say without mincing words that it was mother luck that placed this position on my laps. It was not my ambition to become the CG. All I know is that I was growing up as a young officer and got promoted as and when due. But as at the time it came, I never dreamt of it because I had superior officers as Deputy CGs. But when they said that the service was going to be restructured and that we were going for interview, all that was in my mind was that the best candidate should win. Little did I know it would be me.
So, when you heard about the appointment, how did you feel?
I said God, what did you see in me? It dawned on me that I now had to carry enormous responsibility. But I asked God to give me the wisdom and the courage to enable me execute the job.
Since you did not expect the job, may be you had some godfathers that pushed you for it?
If you understood my lifestyle, in all my stay here in Abuja, the only persons I knew were my immediate bosses. Honestly, I never contacted anybody or lobbied anybody. Before I was made the CG, I lead a quiet life in Abuja. So that question does not arise at all.
And where do you normally go to?
I go to my family in Lagos because given our kind of job, we are always on the move. So you choose a convenient place to put your family while you do all the running.
That means you had been playing truancy?
No, no. It was because I was not in the mainstream of the service. I was in the service directorate. I was in works and logistics. When I finish my job, I go. I never met the minister or the President. The first time I met the President was after my appointment when I went to pay an official visit to him at the Villa.
Given your very tight schedule now, how much of a true father are you? You just emerged from a meeting that lasted many hours and the day is far spent.
That you came today and saw that I had been in a long meeting and all that does not necessarily mean it happens everyday. It happens once in a while and not as a routine. Ordinarily, at 5 p.m., I close and go home to my family. But I still keep my door and telephones open throughout the night for reports from the field. At times, I walk around and watch people who go to play golf because I do not know how to play it.
Are you afraid of playing it?
I just want to develop it as a hobby; that is all.
Which sport are you into?
When I was in school, I used to play football. What I normally do this time around is to take a very long walk. That is what I do as a hobby.
You became the CG early this year?
Yes, on the 24th of January, 2005.
In what condition did you meet the NIS?
Eh, when I was appointed, I found a service that had a lot of problems in terms of structure, morale and facilities to work with. But, again, we decided to face the issues that have to do with morale and welfare in order to reposition our service to meet the challenges.
By doing what?
If you have been following the trend of events in our service, you will see that we have shortfall in the payment of salaries, non-payment of salaries and what have you. When I came in, I decided to change the way we receive our salaries. It used to be manual, but we decided to computerise our payment system. After that, we centralised the payment system because hitherto, paymasters always came to us complaining of shortfalls in their wage bills and asking that the headquarters should make money available to them to enable them meet up with that. We felt that if we centralised this information, they would be able to see at a glance if there is shortfall or not. And again, there were so many distortions in the payment of salary as allowances were not uniform nationwide. So by centralising it, all that became a thing of the past. We computerised everything, and in doing that, we succeeded in removing the issues of ghost workers and normalised the allowances that our officers are entitled to.
Did you succeed in saving some money through this?
Yes, in computerising and centralising our payment system, we succeeded in pulling down our wage bill. We made a monthly saving of N17.5m as a result of this.
That means there were some ghost workers in the system?
Of course, yes. That means there were people who were swallowing this money, whether you call them ghost workers or not. What we know is that there were wastages which have been curbed.
Let us look at the issue of terrorism which has shaken London and the entire world like a volcano. What is the NIS doing to forestall any such attack on the country?
First and foremost, we are introducing many measures that will assist us in curbing the issue of terrorism. The NIS is not alone in the security matrix of the nation. We exchange information with sister organisations and other immigrations all over the world. In so doing, we exchange information with respect to persons that are identified as possible terrorists.
Have you been able to pick any serious security breach that could lead to attacks?
No, I would not say we have been able to, because we don't have any serious threat.
Even through the land borders?
I am talking about all the entry points, either through the land, sea or air. We keep our ears and eyes open on all of them.
The trend of terrorism in the world has shown that it can happen even internally. With the Combined ExpatriateScheme in place, what are you doing to make sure you have adequate record of aliens in Nigeria so that you can filter out those that can be easily recruited into terrorrism?
You will agree with me that the calibre of expatriates in Nigeria are working ones. I don't think they fall within the group you are looking at. However, our system has a central data base where all information in respect of all the expatriates we have registered are keyed into. We can recall them when we need to.
What of those that are not registered, like those doing menial jobs like guards and so on?
Now you are talking of those who do not fall into the scheme. You will remember that Nigeria signed the ECOWAS protocol with 16 countries with respect to right of residence and establishment. You know that the free movement of persons will not involve the requirement of visa to come into Nigeria. The first part of the agreement requires them to visit Nigeria within a period of 90 days and that has been rectified to the extent that a citizen of a member-state can visit without visa. Moreover, we have Immigration posts in all the loacl government areas of the country and it is their duty to register this category. They are surely doing so.
Do not forget that we have extensive borders.
I am not shying away from that. We have very extensive land borders in this country. Some other countries are privileged to have natural boundaries surrounding them like Britain, which is an island. That does not mean we are not preparing ourselves against any eventuality. Towards that, we have reactivated our border patrol unit and gone into discussions with the Nigeria Police to enable us train our border patrol operatives; because we do not have such facilities in our training schools. So, we are sending about 250 for training next week.
And you believe that will be enough?
The idea is that over time, we will build a force that will enable us strengthen our patrols along the border so that we check the infiltration of our borders.
You talked earlier about how through computerisation, you have been able to save a whopping sum of N17.5m monthly. Are you not afraid that those who had been benefiting from such could threaten your life?
If we begin to get scared about taking responsibilities, then we cannot solve the problems of this country. Problems are supposed to be solved by people. All it takes is to have the courage. Though there are threats here and there, I am not scared. We had the problem of people who had overstayed in all the places they had served. They turned themselves into institutions and tin gods - in Port Harcourt, Kano and all the passport offices nationwide - all because they wanted to perpetuate corruption. Of course, when we came on board, we uprooted people, removed them from established stations and replaced them with computer-literate people. If one is afraid of his life and cannot do these things, who will do them for us? This is our service. I am not scared at all.
But I know your wife must have warned you at one time or the other
My wife has no business with my job.
But she has business with your life
She has business with my life but I have not told her that my life is threatened. If I feel I cannot do the job, I will throw in the towel and go home. But I feel that this is a responsibility that has to be taken. Let me give you another example: When we came, we had the problem of telephone bills which we could hardly pay. The bill at the headquarters alone was running into N1.5 milion on a monthly basis. I said that I could not sustain the system. I called my technical officers and told them that we needed to move over to pre-paid system which had just been introduced by NITEL at that time, so that we could save money. We did that and allotted a certain amount of money to eligible officers, most of whom do not even have time to make calls. You can see that I have been away in this office throughout today and that does not mean that my telephone bill is not running. People are running it. That is what we found out. After the exercise, we succeeded in bringing down our telephone bill from N1.5million to a little above N300,000 on a monthly basis. These are the things we are not scared of doing.
The issue of racketeering is still prevalent in passport offices...
We have problems associated with passport that we are focusing on. I have put in place a special squad with the anti-corruption unit and they are giving me intelligent reports. This has led to the arrest of many officers who are now in my cell, associated with passport racketeering.
That is interesting. For how long do you keep them in your cell?
We keep them there for about 48 hours before they are released on bail and taken to court. Before the restructuring exercise, my service did not have a legal unit, but all that has changed. Very soon, we will charge many people to court for this offence of passport racketeering and related offences.
On the issue of multiple passports, how is your office handling the involvement of foreign embassies?
You will agree with me that most of the documents that these forgers use and present to foreign embassies are forged documents.
Yet, I learnt that you do not have a forensic laboratory.
When I came on board, there was no forensic laboratory in the service, but we have a forensic expert trained to handle forensic situation. This officer has been using the facilities of the British High Commission and the Spanish Embassy in analysing suspected documents. I said we could not continue like that; that we had to build up our own forensic laboratory. We have started building it.
Will one forensic person be enough for the whole nation?
No, the Swiss authority which recently donated to us some documents, are extending the training programme to us on forensic laboratory. Eleven officers were sent to them for training and those officers are now back in the country.
Recently, it was said that there were about 400 illegal Nigerian immigrants in Switzerland, how did they get there? It is like our borders are so porous that many Nigerians trek their way through the North to get out of the country illegally?
If you have been watching the CNN recently, you will see that in Britain, they have 950,000 asylum seekers. I watched a television programme on the Reality TV where alien problems in America was analysed. In Arizona land area alone, they have over 200, 000 illegal entries every month.
So, if that can happen in America, which is considered a developed nation, we should not worry about Nigeria's case?
What I am saying is that when we are talking of illegal movement, it is a social problem. For example, if a foreigner decides to visit Nigeria, upon presentation of his papers at the airport, he is cleared if he meets all the requirements. Leaving, at the end of the day, depends on him. It happens everywhere. And if you can find it all over the World, then Nigeria cannot be an exception.
What are you doing to curb it?
We have a Directorate of Investigation and Inspection that monitors the activities of foreigners in the nation. We also insist that companies that employ expatriates must forward monthly returns on such expatriates. Again, we depend on intelligence reports from our attaches at the local governments.
Does the service have information on the number of Nigerians serving jail terms outside the shores of the country?
That information should be available at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which co-ordinates all our embassies on the activities of Nigerians in all foreign countries outside the shores of the country.
There were complaints by Nigerians living abroad that there was so much corruption involved in getting passports abroad.
I have not received any information suggesting that there is corruption in our passport offices abroad. When I do, I will look into it with a view to bringing a solution to it.
I'm sure you saw the newspaper report which indicated that Immigration officers at Port Harcourt International Airport were engaged in corruption?
I got the report and I was seriously disturbed. In fact, the Controller of Rivers State Command and the Officer in charge of Port Harcourt were here to present their cases. They have to convince me in writing that what the minister said is not true, because we have so many agencies working in our airports. The problem we have in these airports is that all these agencies arrogate to themselves the power to handle and deal with passports. I am not saying our officers are clean. But if government can help us streamline these agencies, that will be good for us. Very soon, I am going to introduce institutionalised tag for every staff of the service in addition to the name tag on their uniform. This will enable us identify our own.
One day, you will leave this post, what are the legacies you will want to leave behind?
Honestly, the legacy I want to leave behind and the vision and mission of my administration is to leave an information technology-driven organisation because everything we do has to do with documents. My aspiration is to computerise all our works. This I have been doing because immediately I was appointed, I looked at the curriculum of our training schools and found out it would not meet the challenges of today, if applied in the training of our operatives. We therefore re-packaged our curriculum and put in information technology as a compulsory elective. This was done through the consultant that we hired from ASCON. I also make sure that table top computers are deployed in all our offices with connection to the Internet. My idea and hope is that by the time we are deploying our e-passport, most of the transactions either to renew or get passport, will be done through the computer. Already we have reached 90 per cent completion in developing our own website.
The way you speak shows that you have so much passion for this job. If you were not in this job, where would you have been?
If I were not in immigration, I would have been in immigration.(General laughter).
Why did you say so?
Because I have been doing this job for the past 26 years. I joined the profession immediately I left the university in 1978. So, immigration is already a way of life for me. I am used to it.
Do you still have time to unwind?
Unfortunately, I do not drink alcohol. So I am not a party type.
Then you may like palm wine?
I don't drink palm wine. I used to, but I don't anymore.
You stopped on health grounds or because of religious belief?
No, enough is enough. At a point in one's life, one should learn to say no, I have had enough.
But you still have your regular pepper soup?
Yes, in my house, because I have that upbringing from my parents. As a bachelor, I was not eating outside but in my house. I developed that habit may be because I was my mother's darling child. I enjoyed cooking so that I never developed the habit of eating outside. That does not suggest that I did not enjoy my youth. I had a very vibrant youthful life.
What advice would you give to your subordinates?
They should be selfless. Give your best, do not love money first before service. Believe in what you can contribute because somebody is watching you, which you may not know. When I was doing my job, I did not know I was being watched. This is what I will advise my subordinates to emulate because hard work pays.
I still wonder how you cope with your female admirers considering the kind of job you do.
The temptation you get as somebody in charge of works and logistics is even worse. They would come and line up; my officers know that I do not have time for that. Of course, if you admire me, I admire you too but anything beyond that, me I no dey.
SATURDAY PUNCH, August 13, 2005