When,back in January, at the conclusion of its 59th annual meeting, the Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prisons Board (CDFIPB) approved the promotion of more than 8,000 officers, no eyebrows were raised. Promotions are a matter of administrative routine within the federal civil service, and there seemed to be nothing about the latest round to raise anyone’s hackles. Yet, judging by last week’s petition to the National Assembly by a group of aggrieved officers, the latest exercise would appear to have been anything but routine.
According to the officers, “A close study of the promotion list showed that Muslim officers from the North, especially the North-West, were favoured above others from other regions. How does one explain that the first two pages of the list of officers promoted from the rank of Chief Superintendent of Immigration (CSI) to Assistant Comptroller of Immigration (ACI) contained the names of Muslim officers of Northern extraction?” The officers also pointed out that “Katsina State alone produced five to six comptrollers, while some southern states had none.” Furthermore, “Some officers have been on the rank of CSI, ACI and DCI for six to eight years and these Northern officers who were recently elevated in 2014 were again elevated at (sic) the detriment of their Southern counterparts.”
The NIS has moved to debunk these allegations. In a statement, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Service, Mr. James Sunday, insisted that January’s exercise, like previous ones undertaken by the NIS, was based on merit. He also took issue with the aggrieved officers for taking their case to the National Assembly rather than petition the Board directly. But the worry for any close observer of the Buhari administration is the uncanny familiarity of the officers’ complaint. For instance, it recalls a similar petition filed by aggrieved officers in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June 2016 when the Federal Government released a list of 47 career ambassadorial nominees. The petitioners’ main animus at the time was that “the general outlook of the list is not clear and no apparent order or criteria were used, thereby making room for insinuations and speculations.”
While the Buhari administration has consistently rejected allegations of ethnic bias leveled against it, it is imperative that it put its money where its mouth is in this matter by ordering an investigation into the officers’ allegations. It is not enough, as the NIS PRO has done, to dismiss the officers’ complaint and pick holes in the method they have used to air their grievances. Nepotism and ethno-religious discrimination are serious infractions. The Federal Government cannot afford to treat them with levity.
Tribune
