Abba Moro, erstwhile Minister of Interior, speaks on his experiences in office and efforts at repositioning the ministry. He also gives credit to former President Goodluck Jonathan, accusing Nigerians of not being fair in assessing his administration. Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, presents the excerpts.
Experience in Jonathan’s administration
I was very excited when I was appointed a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And when I was eventually assigned the portfolio of the Ministry of Interior, I was enthusiastic because it was at a time various challenges of internal security and cohesion were on the front burner of national discourse. So, I felt that as a former teacher and somebody who had been very critical of the society as it were, given the level of our poverty, given the level of our underdevelopment, that I was going to afford myself that opportunity of contributing positively to the development and advancement of Nigeria. Particularly, when I looked at the configuration of the Ministry of Interior as it were, I felt that that was certainly an appropriate place to start the kind of revolution, the kind of reform that I had articulated all along even as a teacher. So, it was a very interesting experience.
But I must say to you that it wasn’t an easy task because I came into a system where there was this mindset of government work not being anybody’s work. They looked at (public service) as everybody’s work and nobody’s work. And they saw participation in governance as an opportunity to partake of the national cake.
As a matter of fact, when I came to the Ministry of Interior, the morale of the staff was very low. From operational facilities available for work to the welfare of the staff, especially the issue of lack of promotion as and when due, especially of the parastatals.
But, of course, I saw life – always as part of my orientation – as a challenge. So, I felt that faced with these daunting challenges of raising the attitude and the morale of the staff was essentially a great part of the work that I had to do; part of the achievement that I had to record in the Ministry of Interior.
So, I set out to address most of these issues frontally. I am happy to note that by my own estimation and by the estimation of keen observers of the Ministry of Interior and of the development of the country, I left the Ministry of Interior better than I saw it.
Landmark achievements in the ministry
One of the first things that I did in the Ministry of Interior was to focus on the human component of the instrument for work. And that was ensuring that the welfare of staff was adequately addressed. I made the work of the ministry the collective work of the ministry – the staff, the contractors, everybody got involved in ensuring that the Ministry of Interior assumed the competitiveness of other ministries. So, we started wearing new look of what a ministry should look like. In addition to that, I took bold steps to ensure that one of the teething problems of the ministry, especially of the parastatals – the lack of promotion of staff – took priority over most of the things we were doing.
I set out to ensure that the promotion arrears were rectified. As at the time I left the office in 2015, we had brought our promotions to 2014, meaning that everybody that was qualified for promotion was promoted, whether it was in the Prisons, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) or in the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) and the fire service. Unfortunately, though, we had handicaps in the existence of establishment vacancies. So, if there are persons who had not been promoted as and when due when I left office, it must be as a result of unavailability of establishment vacancies in such departments. Otherwise virtually everybody was promoted.
It was in my time that the staff of the NSCDC got their appointments and placements regularised. Recall that the NSCDC was merely a voluntary organisation in the beginning. I ensured that the verification exercise that was undertaken after the legalisation of the organisation was dusted and published. We set up a committee immediately to implement the recommendations of the committee that carried out the verification exercise. Today, the NSCDC can compete favourably with any other civil defenceorganisation in the world. As a matter of fact, NSCDC is a full-fledged member of the International Civil DefenceOrganisation.
Allegation of underachievement as Minister of Interiorby the immediate past Comptroller General of Immigration, Martin Abeshi
It was very laughable for somebody who was a Comptroller General of Immigration to say that I didn’t achieve anything as Minister of Interior during my tenure. First of all, it was during my tenure that he was promoted to the position of Deputy Comptroller General.
Abeshi and his promotion
He deserved the promotion. Most of the persons that had stagnated promotions deserved promotion. But they were stagnated. Though they were due to for promotion, promotion exercises were not forthcoming. It is on record that by the time I came to the Ministry of Interior, people had been stagnated on one position for upward of 14 to 16 years.We tried to reposition and reform the system in such a manner that everybody that attained the requirement for promotion got promoted.
It was when I assumed office that I completed the passport office that you know today as the passport office in Nigeria Immigration, what they call White House, an annex to the corporate office of NIS.
NIS today has two sets of passports – a 32-page passport and 64-page passport. It was under my watch that former PresidentGoodluck Jonathan launched the 64-page passport. That is the first time since the life of NIS that the booklet of the Nigerian passport was reviewed. We made it possible for people who were going to invest substantial sums of money in Nigeria to get visa very easily to come to Nigeria by reviewing the visa regime. And one of the highpoints of that review was the introduction of the acquisition of visa at ports of entry.
We went further to reposition NIS to effectively discharge its duty of patrolling our borders. First, we identified the number of controlled borders that we have in the country. As at the time I left office, it was 84. We had also identified 1,497 irregular border entries.
Before I assumed office, we had only 15 Nigerian missions issuing Nigerian passports and visas with Immigration officers. I introduced 23 additional centres.
The money realised from passports and visas ran into billions. In 2014 alone, 986,871 e-passports were issued to Nigerians, translating to N9,249,483,600 generated locally, while the Nigerian Immigration desks at missions abroad, where we are currently issuing e-passports, generated the sum of $15,346,980 – this included visa revenue. In 2013, we generated N7,444,761,250 and offshore generated $12,176,625 – visa revenue inclusive.
These were very ambitious reform initiatives we undertook that yielded results substantially to the development of Nigeria. Therefore, I think it is a very uncharitable commentary by anybody, especially by somebody who should know, to say that Abba Moro did not achieve anything as Minister of Interior.
We achieved all these against the backdrop of the fact that throughout my period as Minister of Interior, I never got up to 50 per cent release of my budget. The highest I got was 48.5 per cent. Yet, we involved external bodies to complement our efforts through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. That was how we were able to undertake most of the projects.
I leave my tenure in the Ministry of Interior to history to judge. But I can tell you without any fear of contradiction that I tried my hands on very many reform initiatives in line with the transformation agenda of the last administration and we recorded some achievements.
Immigration lacking the capacity to produce passports
That was what the then Comptroller General of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Abeshi, perhaps took exception to. He didn’t quite like that comment and he came out to say that I didn’t achieve anything as Minister of Interior.
What I meant was that because there was this indication that Immigration could produce passport and I said hey! How? One, for you to produce passport,you must have the facilities. Immigration Service is not trained to produce passports. Two, you must have the structural facilities to produce passports. You must have the machines to produce passports. On the instructions of (then) President Jonathan, we had explored the possibility of withdrawing the production of the passports from Irish Smart Technologies to hand it over to a government-owned institution to produce our passports. I went to Lagos to Nigeria Security Printing and Minting Company (Mint) to inspect their facilities with the possibility of ceding to them the production of passports. I discovered that even Mint didn’t have the capacity. Mint had the capacity to produce the Nigerian naira, but lacked the capacity to produce the Nigerian passport. They told me so, adding that if the government could procure appropriate machineries for them within six months, they could be in a position to produce passports. And I said if the Nigerian government had the money, in the first place, to buy the machinery to produce the passports, there wouldn’t have been the need, in the first place, to engage the PPP model, which is contractor-financed practice to produce our passports. The private partner produces the passports, sells the passports and shares the profit with the Nigerian government. That is what is in practice today. So, if the Nigerian Mint, for instance, that is a major Nigerian printing organisation, doesn’t have the capacity to produce Nigerian passports, is it the Immigration that will have the capacity? They don’t have the capacity. It was not an insult. It is the plain truth.
Not meant to be an indictment?
It was not meant to undermine their integrity. It was not meant to indict the NIS. It was just simply putting the situation in proper perspective. Because as at the time we were meeting with House of Representatives, various organisations were coming to clamour for the House of Representatives to recommend that they be given the responsibility to produce passports. Producing Nigerian international passports with the security gadgets and implications and the rest of them is not a picnic. And so, I said so and stood by it, because that is the truth, because I’ve worked there,and I know it. I think the man in charge of Immigration then, Abeshi, only misunderstood my intention and went to tell the world that I didn’t achieve anything as Minister of Interior.
Jonathan’s administration performing woefully and therefore did not in any way meet the yearnings of the people
Many Nigerians have been unfair to the administration of Jonathan. The administration was anchored on a transformation agenda. And the essence was to transform Nigeria to the next level. Is it in the area of road transportation? Yes, we may not have gone all the way. But so many roads were flagged off in this country. The second Niger Bridge, the Oweto Bridge with its corresponding routes, contracts awarded for the Enugu-Port Harcourt Road, contracts awarded for the rehabilitation of several roads in Nigeria, contracts awarded for the re-design of the dualisation of the Keffi-Makurdi-Enugu Road. Look at the new looks that Nigerian airports were wearing and the construction works that were going on there. They were not started by this administration, but by the last administration. Only recently, the Kaduna-Abuja railway was commissioned. You know certainly that it was not started by this administration. But government is a continuum. Look at the Lagos-Kano railway. Look at the Port Harcourt-Makurdi-Maiduguri railway line. All these are efforts that were engineered towards raising Nigeria to the next level. Is it in the area of power and housing? Look at the electoral process. Throughout the administration of Jonathan, we’ve never heard of any inconclusive election.
Jonathan laid a foundation for a sustainable democracy and left the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as independent as it could be. In the run-up to the 2015 elections, there were urgings and promptings from various sections for Jonathan to sack (Prof. Attahiru) Jega. There were insinuations that Jega had a hidden agenda that was targeted at ensuring that Jonathan lost the election. But what did the man do? He said no! Let him be. Let him do the election, even when he had the powers to sack Jega at that time and put any of his cronies there. But he said no! He was not going to do that. And before the last counts of the result of the election, for the first time in the history of this country, Jonathan conceded defeat, picked the phone and called Buhari to congratulate him because Jonathan had told the people of this country that his election as the President of the country was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. And he held on to his words.