By Ruby Cornie and Susan Ajibuwa
Facts continue to emerge about the deep rot at Nigeria Correctional Service as Senior Officers due for retirement continue to dig in, refusing to leave and perpetuating scandalous unlawful elongation of service aimed at stifling the career advancement of subordinates.
Sharpedgenews through the efforts of its investigative team uncovered efforts by some officers in the leadership hierarchy of the agency refusing to go after being due for retirement, they have perfected a disinformation and misinformation machinery of casting the government of Nigeria in a negative light, by asserting that president Ahmed Tinubu exists for the protection of institutional entitlement for moslems only.
According to investigations, a Deputy Comptroller-General, Mr. A.A. Magaji, who was long due for retirement, was granted a year extension which is now long overdue yet he continues in office coordinating budgets and finance. A.A. Mogaji should have retired about two years ago. His age remains uncertain. He has become an irremovable principality within the service.
Another officer within the service who should have retired is the current Principal Staff Officer (PSO) to the Comptroller-General, Mr. Salisu who was recently promoted to the rank of a Comptroller, long after he should have exited the service. Salisu should have pulled out about two years ago, he was granted institutional illegitimate promotion, not because of hard work or commitment to objective work ethics. He controls the organizational mechanisms at the service headquarters in Abuja.
Salisu hardly respects superior officers and he takes undue advantage of the educational and cognitive deficiencies of the Comptroller General, Haliru Nababa, to foist personal and parochial agenda on the organization. Nababa is often described as the “noted” boss on account of always providing mono-syllabic answers and very little critical thinking.
The religious agenda of the privileged few in the correctional service was championed and actively promoted by the former Minister of Interior, the supervising minister, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. With the coming of Ahmed Bola Tinubu and a Muslim vice president, a clear indifference to the tender sensibilities of the Nigerian federation, the cabal has become more brazen and insolent in accomplishing its goals of subduing and lording it over persons considered outside the loop “you are only managed, tolerated or pushed outside if you are not a northerner or a moslem here”, said a knowledgeable operative of the service, who offered an insight into the unlawful shenanigans under conditions of anonymity.
In matters concerning promotions, internal postings, claims employment and contract awards, the same sub-standard modes of operations have become pervasive. Monetary and sexual inducement are not strange tools of gaining favors at the Nigeria Correctional Service. The rot runs so deep.