The Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, says the ministry is committed to the promotion of workers, declaring that it will now become an annual ritual.

The minister, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, stated that the ministry carried out a promotion exercise last year where nobody needed to pay money to get promoted.

He said the ministry has promoted over 32, 000 officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, the Nigeria Fire Service, and the Nigerian Correctional Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, and other workers in the interior ministry.

Tunji-Ojo said that non-promotion of workers who were due for promotion bred corruption in the system, with many paying money to be able to gain promotion.

He said, “When we came on board, we realised that we used to have this national promotion, like people being promoted maybe in 2024, and it takes effect from 2023. So, when we looked at the record since the board’s inception, responsible for promotion, recruitment, and discipline, which was in 1986, never had we had a promotion exercise for that particular year completed within that year.

“And last year I tell you for the first time we broke that jinx, to the glory of God, people were promoted. And not just that people were promoted, I tell you that so many people, when we came on board, were on the same grade, they were stagnated in their careers, for like six, seven, some eight, some even nine years, but last year, we cleared the backlog of promotion, and in one day about 32,000 officers were promoted across all our agencies.”

Asked if the promotion exercise will be done every year, Tunji-Ojo said, “Definitely, I will tell you that we have already started the process for 2024 and we are hoping by the grace of God by October, we should be done with the promotion of 2024.

“Let’s call a spade a spade, if it is your own private company, will you demotivate workers of your own company that you know you need them to be at their best to be able to take you to that level?

“So, we believe that it is not a privilege for an officer who is qualified, who has passed the exam and met all the criteria to be promoted.”

The interior minister said the Bola Tinubu administration is dedicated to seeing that workers are motivated to keep doing their jobs.

According to him, President Tinubu has approved life insurance for all the officers after it was discovered that they didn’t have any.

He said that when they came into office, there was no rent and peculiar allowance for the officers in the ministry but as at January this year, every officer started receiving their rent and security allowances after the President approved that.

On allegation of fraudulent recruitment in the ministry, the minister said there has not been any recruitment in the ministry since he came into office except the Fire Service, which, according to him, has been transparent.

He assured Nigerians that under his leadership there will be no secrecy in recruitment, saying that every citizen will have access to participate in the process. (Channels TV)

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