Warns them to stop aiding smugglers of firearms, illegal immigrants, bandits etc

By Dirisu Yakubu

Comptroller General, CG, of the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, Muhammed Babandede has accused some officers particularly those at the Katsina Command, of the service of aiding bandits, kidnappers and other criminal elements in the perpetration of crimes in the society.

Babandede while addressing operatives of the service in Katsina recently, vowed to flush out bag eggs in the system bent on mortgaging the sovereignty of Nigeria for filthy financial gains.

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In a video now trending on social media, the NIS boss warned officers of the service to desist from all manner of criminality, stressing that “if you do well, you will see well, if you do bad, you will see bad from me.”

Apparently worried at the manner arms and ammunition cross borders for use against innocent Nigerians, Babandede condemned the attitude of looking the other side by his men while a criminal armed with a dangerous weapon is granted access to the society after money changes hands.

Barking into a microphone, the CG said, “We must stop this. Enough is enough. You look at the other side, a person passes and he passes with a gun. You look at the other side, an illegal migrant wanted by the police or other security agencies, enters. You look around, a kidnapper passes. If you look at the other side, I will make sure you move to the other side, and leave the service.

“Things must change in this country. We cannot continue like this. You know where all the illegal migrants are. Some of them have stayed and become Nigerians. We have cases where we prosecute Nigereins who attempted to get passport in this command and they were assisted by you, an officer and the officer had the gut to talk to somebody to beg. Beg for what? We cannot collect bribe and compromise our country.

“You know them, you know the bad guys. You know where they sleep, where they work and everything about them but because of little ‘income’ you collect from them, you compromise. We will work with the traditional institution and I will like to empower local government officers to check, monitor and report.”

He further reminded them to stop seeing issuance of passport as the primary mandate of the Nigeria Immigration Service, saying, “Our duty is not passport but all of you want to go to passport (office). Yes, we issue passport but that is not our major job. Our major job is to guide the security of this country- the borders, land, sea and air. We are doing well in air but for the land borders, because you think nobody sees you, you do so many things. If you do well, you will see well. If you do bad, you will see bad from me. I hope that is clear to everybody.”

The outburst of Babandede is coming quickly on the heel of a similar allegation by prominent Islamic scholar, Sheik Ahmad Gumi who earlier in the week accused “some bad elements” in the Nigerian security architecture of aiding and abetting the movement of arms and ammunition into Nigerians forests for use by insurgents and bandits.