The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) on Wednesday inaugurated a Personnel Training and Resource Centre (PTRC) in Benin to boost the knowledge of personnel in its Edo Command.
The centre, which would help the personnel to deal with contemporary issues on migration was funded by the Government of Netherland and implemented by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
In a remark at the occasion, Alhaji Mohammad Babandede, the Comptroller-General of NIS, said that the project was a product of commitment of the present leaders of the service toward capacity building.
Represented by Mr Kayode Eniolorunda, the Edo Comptroller of Immigration, Babandede said the project was a clear evidence of the partnership between development partners, especially IOM and NIS.
He disclosed that the centre had been constructed in the pilot states of Anambra, Cross River, Edo, Ogun, Kano, Kebbi State and NIS Headquarters in Abuja.
The comptroller-general also disclosed that more than 600 personnel had undergone training in Calabar and Abuja since April.
He said the performance evaluation of the PTRCs in Abuja and Calabar showed that the project had recorded tremendous success in the realisation of the expected outcome of the training.
Babandede further said that the learning management system deployed at the PTRCs had offered opportunity for operatives who had little knowledge of ICT to be better equipped with e-learning platforms.
He thanked the IOM and the Training Strategy Implementation (TSI-1) project donors which included Republic of Netherlands and Switzerland.
The NIS boss charged officers and men of the command to take advantage of the facility and participate actively in the training which he said would focus on core immigration duties and contemporary migration trends.
Earlier, Ms Felicia Umoru, who represented IOM, said the centre would boost inter-agency coordination between NIS and National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
Umoru said that the coordination would be in the area of human trafficking and migrant smuggling through a joint training approach implemented at the established PTRC at NIS commands.
She said the primary objective was to boost the capacity of personnel to carry out their duties as gatekeepers of the country.
