NEMESIS: Immigration officer nabbed for swindling job seekes

NEMESIS: Immigration officer nabbed for swindling job seekes
• Collected between N120,000 and N150,000 from each applicant

Police detectives in Lokoja, Kogi State, have uncovered a syndicate of Immigration officials whose specialty was defrauding desperate youths seeking appointment into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS).
Already, an inspector with the Nigeria Immigration Service, Mr. Friday Ochimana, has been arrested and is now cooling his heels in a police cell in Lokoja.

Activities of the suspected fraudsters were brought into the open after last weekend’s recruitment exercise into the para-military organization across the country.

Investigations by Daily Sun revealed that the syndicate usually demanded huge sums of money from desperate applicants into the Immigration Service each time there was a recruitment exercise.

Ochimana, touted as the syndicate’s leader, however, ran out of luck on Sunday when he was arrested in a hotel at Adankolo quarters, Lokoja.

Prior to his arrest, Ochimana and his group were said to have successfully duped several applicants or their relations, while pretending to be acting on behalf of their superior officials.
Amounts usually demanded from such applicants, according to investigations carried out by Daily Sun, were between N120,000 and N150,000 for graduate applicants, while applicants with NCE and ND were made to cough out between N70,000 and 100,000. Applicants with GCE were levied between N50,000 and N60,000.

Nemesis caught up with Ochimana after he had successfully collected N428,000 from a popular hotelier in Lokoja. The amount was purportedly to secure automatic placement for two of the hotelier’s sons and some other relatives in the Immigration Service.

Daily Sun gathered that Ochimana, met the hotelier sometime last year at the undisclosed hotel and introduced himself as an Immigration officer in charge of recruitment exercise at the Immigration Headquarters in Abuja. He reportedly promised to assist the hotelier by ensuring that his children secured positions in the service whenever there was any recruitment exercise.

Two months later, Ochimana allegedly sent his representative to the hotelier to immediately demand the sum of N428,000, saying there were openings in the service which needed to be filled. Ochimana reportedly told the hotelier that the openings were not made public as only the comptroller-general and his deputies were the only ones in charge.

The hotelier was said to have told some of his friends of the development. He eventually paid N428,000 into a Diamond Bank account with number 0652000020516. The account was in Friday Ochimana’s name.

The hotelier and his friends began to suspect that something was amiss when after three months the applicants were yet to receive any notification from the Immigration authorities. He subsequently went to the NIS headquarters in Abuja to lodge a formal complaint. It was gathered that Ochimana and some others allegedly ensured that the hotelier did not succeed in getting an audience with the relevant authorities.

Ochimana was said to have pleaded with the hotelier and promised to refund the money already collected. According to him, his boss at the Immigration Service had given the slots to a higher bidder. He reportedly paid the sum of N110,000 and wrote an undertaking to pay the balance a few days later. That promise was, however, not kept.

Ochimana ran out of luck when he was sighted by police detectives at the Chari Megumeri Barracks, Lokoja, venue of the recruitment exercise held last weekend. He was eventually picked up at a hotel in Lokoja.

When police officers wanted to conduct a search in his hotel room, his belongings were said to have mysteriously disappeared. But his brother, Sunday, a security guard with NAFDAC as well as some staff of the hotel have been arrested for alleged complicity.

Speaking with Daily Sun, Ochimana admitted that he got the said sum from the victims as gratification for employment. He, however, pleaded not to be made to suffer alone, revealing that he and other members of his group were merely acting for some superior officers.
The Divisional Police Officer at the station, Mr. John Adewumi confirmed Ochimana’s arrest. He said some useful documents had been retrieved from the suspect, but added that the police were still investigating the case.

When Daily Sun visited the Kogi State Command of the Immigration Service in Lokoja, the Comptroller, Mohammed Baba Nurudeen, confirmed that Ochimana was indeed posted to the command early this year.
He told Daily Sun that his command had consistently warned applicants not to offer bribe or any inducement to any official to secure placement in the service even as he claimed ignorance of the existence of any syndicate.

According to the comptroller, Friday Ochimana had been posted to Lokoja Local Government as a field official after he had been posted to the state headquarters. He wondered how the suspect was able to participate in the recruitment exercise meant for officials of the state headquarters alone. He described the entire exercise as free, fair and transparent from the beginning to the end, saying it was carried out according to laid down rules and regulations.

Over 6,992 applicants turned up for the recruitment, while one person was reported to have died as a result of exhaustion from the exercise.

From EMMANUEL ADEYEMI, Lokoja
sunnewsonline.com