Nigeria Pledges 35% Female Recruitment Quota In Key Security Agencies

The federal government has announced a major shift in recruitment practices for four crucial security services: the Civil Defence, Fire, Correctional, and Immigration Services. Under the revised guidelines, 35% of all new recruits will be women, marking a significant step towards gender equality in these traditionally male-dominated fields.

The announcement was made on Friday by Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, after a meeting of the Board of the Civil Defence, Fire, Correctional, and Immigration Services.

According to him, the decision aligns with President Bola Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope Agenda” and aims to promote professionalism, gender mainstreaming, and federal character principles within the agencies.

The ongoing recruitment into the Federal Fire Service will be the first to implement the new guidelines, Tunji-Ojo said in a statement released by his Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, Alao Babatunde.

Tunji-Ojo, who spoke through the Secretary of the Board, Ja’afaru Ahmed, was flanked at the briefing by the Comptroller-General of Immigration, Caroline Wura-Ola Adepoju, the Commandant-General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Dr Ahmed Audi, and the Controller General of the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) Haliru Nababa.

The Controller General of the Federal Fire Service (FFS), Abdulganiyu Jaji, was also in attendance.

According to the minister, the ongoing recruitment into the Federal Fire Service would be based on the new guidelines, focusing largely on professionalism, gender mainstreaming, and Federal Character principles.

Tunji-Ojo said: “The federal government, through the Board, has approved the review of the guidelines for recruitment into, and promotion in all the four Services under the Ministry of Interior.

“The development also comes with the modernization of the operations of the Nigeria Immigration Service. The modernization is going to be all-encompassing, training, recruitment, promotion, professionalism, and capacity building and deployment of cutting-edge technologies.”

The minister announced that the Services would, in due course, release timelines for recruitment into all the services.

He warned Nigerians interested in applying not to patronize scammers, saying that the government is already aware of some scammers who are asking for money for recruitment into the Fire Service.

“This is to appeal to Nigerians not to patronize scammers. Anybody asking you to pay money to be recruited into any of the Agencies is a scammer. We are aware of their activities and we will go after them.”

Shedding more light on the modernization of the Immigration Service, the Comptroller-General, Mrs. Adepoju, said the Service would emphasize capacity building, specialization along professional lines to ensure that promotion is not a reward for redundancy.