The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has graduated the first all-female Armed Squad, as part of efforts to strengthen the fight against terrorism, trans-border crimes and other emerging security threats in the country.
The passing out parade of the 61 female officers took place at the Immigration training school, Ahoada, Rivers State. Speaking at the event, the Comptroller General of Service, Isah Kere Idris said the training of the officers is the first of its kind in the NIS, and a loud statement of intent and enduring resolve of the NIS in ensuring the security of borders and the lives and properties of citizens.
“Today’s event is another innovation which will further enhance our capacity to effectively deploy our personnel to critical areas of national assignment as may be required from time to time,” the CIG explained.
“Today, we are here to witness the Passing Out Parade of 61 officers, all female, who have undergone rigorous physical training on weapons Handling, Combat craft, Border security and Counter Terrorism technics in addition to other investigative and intelligence gathering training,” he added.
He stated that the officers have demonstrated their readiness and capacity to stand toe-to-toe with the male as they go out there to serve the nation.
The NIS boss further informed that the service presently has over 1000 personnel undergoing the Pre-basic training programme in Immigration Training School, Kano and the Customs Training School, Goron Dutse, Kano.
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According to him, the essence of the training is to ensure the readiness of personnel both physically and mentally to not only confront the security challenges in our country, but also to compete favourably with their counterparts the world over in the performance of core Immigration duties.
He, therfore charhed the officers to consider themselves privileged to have been considered worthy of the assignment and see it as a clarion call. “The task before you is indeed daunting, but I enjoin you to be focused and disciplined at all time because these are the precursors for success in the course of carrying out your duties. Once more, I congratulate you all for going through this period of training and enduring the difficulties associated with such training’, he urged.
