One year ago, President Bola Tinubu inaugurated his ministerial cabinet where, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo and 46 other ministers were announced to oversee the affairs of the various ministries.
Emerging as one of the shining lights in President Tinubu’s administration has been the interior minister, Tunji-Ojo who hit the ground running from day one by visiting all the agencies under the ministry and what caught the attention of Nigerians was a particular visit he made to the Nigeria Immigration Service Headquarters. Astonishingly, the prevalent bull in the China shop at that time was a complete scarcity of passport booklets creating a backlog of over 200,000 passports which were cleared in what is termed unprecedented in the history of Nigerian immigration.
The strategies for mitigation and innovative methods to boost firefighter preparedness in varied emergencies gave birth to new fire engines and rapid intervention vehicles to improve emergency and fire Response time.
The fire service should be the first responders to any emergency, therefore, it is worthy of note that the construction of the Fire service academy is ongoing, the facilities will comprise well-equipped training centres, recreational centres, a gym, and a clinic, which will not only meet local demands but will be of world-class standard, comparable to any obtainable worldwide. it’s expected to stretch across all the geopolitical zones.
One of the problems in the Nigerian legal system is not the decongestion of Nigerian prisons but rather the reduction of the country’s awaiting trial/remand prison population. Hon. Tunji-Ojo decongested the correctional centres by 5%, amounting to about 4,068 inmates; which comprised of incarcerated persons with the option of fine and compensation in custodial status nationwide.
N585 m was raised by corporate bodies as Corporate Social Responsibility for this purpose this in turn saved the government a billion naira annually. Other reforms in the agency include; the collaboration with the justice ministry on non-custodial centres, and the review of the Justice Criminal Act, our custodial centres are receiving massive facelifts, with standard perimeter fences and expansion of certain corridors.
In the era of technology, Nigeria is taking significant strides towards modernising its travel documentation, data storage, and registration and also making life easier for the people through the establishment of a Dell 1.4 PetaBytes (PB) Tier 4 Data Centre and Command, passport facilities at select Nigerian Embassies across the globe, installation of e-Gate facilities at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and four each at the international airports in Kano, Enugu, and Port Harcourt, all these will ensure enhanced reliability, durability and increase national security integrity of Nigerian passports.
Regarding employee satisfaction and motivation, promotions have a significant impact on the productivity of any organisation, non-promotion of workers who were due for promotion breeds corruption in the system, that’s why Tunji-Ojo ensured that over 32, 000 personnel across all four interior agencies were promoted in a day, thereby clearing the backlog of promotion and also the approval of Life Assurance and Peculiar Allowance by Tinubu which deserves a big commendation.
As part of the efforts by the Ministry of Interior to ensure adequate security in our borders, the minister of interior provided thirty (30) operational vehicles dedicated to the surveillance and patrol of our border space. At the same time, he also emphasized the vital roles that security agencies play in safeguarding the lives and properties of the people.
Other notches on the scorecard of Tunji-Ojo’s one-year tenure in office are; clearance of the 2.5 million NIN modification backlog, the launch of the Safe School initiative to provide a safe school environment that supports the smooth implementation of teaching and learning in schools, the launch of Mining marshal to help reduced vandalism incidents across mining sites and boosted revenue in the mining sector. The establishment of Power Rangers to see to the protection of the nation’s power infrastructures, and set up of 10,000 Agro Rangers to help safeguard the farmland and protect the farmers across all the Northern states from any form of attacks.
