Retired Immigration Officers Protest Non-Payment Of Entitlements

       

The Nigeria Immigration Service officers who were retired in 2007 have protested against the non-payment of their full entitlements.

The representatives of the 1,300 officers visited the PUNCH Place on Monday and lamented that their forced retirement from service and non-payment of their full entitlements were having a harsh economic effect on them.

They displayed placards bearing various inscriptions such as, “Immigration, pay us our eight years domestic allowance”; and “Accountant General, please pay us our pension.”

In a protest letter signed by Pastor Joseph Onietan, on behalf of the retirees, the group demanded the full payment of their retirement benefits, gratuity, eight years domestic allowance and six months retirement training allowance, among others.

They also accused a former Comptroller General of Immigration, Joseph Ude, of conniving with a former Director of Customs, Immigration and Prison Pension Office, Abdulrasheed Maina, to backdate their retirement from 2007 to 2006.

They explained that the action had forced them to use the old salary structure to compute their retirement benefits as against the improved new salary structure operational as of the time of their retirement.

The petition read in part, “The then Comptroller General of Immigration, Joseph Ude, connived with the then director of CIPPO, Abdulrasheed Maina, to backdate our retirement effective date to 2006. They thereafter, used the old salary structure to compute our retirement benefits.

“The secret behind the action of Ude and Maina was to prevent us from benefitting from the approved new salary structure (COMPASS).

“This explains why our retirement was done in haste. Before the government white paper on the exercise was released, they had handpicked 1,300 of us to be retired.”

The group called on the government to come to its members’ aid, saying efforts to address the situation in the past had yielded no positive result.