Officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) who are on foreign missions in different countries abroad have cried out over the non-payment of their allowances for about 10 months now.
The officers said this has led to some of their colleagues having to send their families back to Nigeria due to inability to pay their rents or feed well, among others.
Among the unpaid allowances include housing, health, utility among others, and according to the officers, they have been crying out since last year but the authorities have not done much to come to their rescue, while their hardship and situation keeps deteriorating.
They said their plight has united them from across the various countries in order to voice out their ordeal so that the authorities can come to their rescue.
Making this known to newsmen yesterday, one of the officers said most of the officers on the missions last received their allowances in March 2024, and since then they have been struggling hard to cope in a foreign land where they have no one, friend or relative to carter for them.
“Some of us could no longer keep our families with us and had to send them back to Nigeria because they can’t feed them. This is also causing us to divide our attention, because our families are suppose to be with us so that we can settle down to do our work perfectly well.
“But unfortunately, our attention has been divided because we keep thinking of our families we sent back to Nigeria and we can’t cater for them. Worse still, we have no money to send to them for their upkeep, school fees, feeding, etc, in Nigeria. All these is traumatizing us in our foreign mission,” the officer said.
Another officer pointed out that some of them are already sleeping in unthinkable places, while others sleep in chancery, as they can no longer afford decent apartments.
According to the officer, they heard that there is a special intervention for them from the government to sort out the problem, yet for many months now they haven’t heard anything again.
The officer added that what they heard was that the hardship in Nigeria is also what is affecting them by extension, adding that their earnest prayer is for things to ease up so that they can get intervention
This, the officer said, is because suffering in another country while representing your great country is sometimes more demoralizing than suffering at home where you can know one or two persons to assist you.
Similarly, another officer said things are often more expensive for them abroad as they often pay for things in dollar equivalent, which is usually very expensive and hard on them.
The officer said they have been crying out but yet the needed intervention to solve their plight is still lacking, adding that the life they are living abroad is daily becoming embarrassing as many people in their countries of service are already ridiculing them, saying they thought Nigeria is the giant of Africa, yet their officers are suffering.
He called on President Bola Tinubu to urgently come to their aid before things get out of hand, pointing out that sometimes the immigration service is trying as they often work with the meager resources available to them.
When contacted for reaction, the Public Relations Officer of NIS, Kenneth Udo, did not respond to the text message sent to him, while his number was busy all through.