Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, minister of interior, says the federal government has reviewed the guidelines for recruitment into four paramilitary agencies.
Tunji-Ojo announced the development at the end of a meeting with the boards of the Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire, and Immigration Services Board (CDCFIB) in Abuja.
The minister, who was represented by Ja’afaru Ahmed, secretary of the board, said 35 percent of recruitment slots will now be allocated to women.
According to Tunj-Ojo, the agencies are the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS), Federal Fire Service (FFS), and Nigeria Immigration Services (NIS).
He said the 35 percent recruitment allocation is in line with the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Tinubu.
The minister said the ongoing recruitment exercise in the Federal Fire Service would follow the new recruitment guidelines.
He said the recruitment would concentrate more on delivering professionalism, gender mainstreaming, and federal character principles.
“The federal government, through the board, has approved the review of the guidelines for recruitment into and promotion in all four services under the ministry of interior,” he said.
“The development also comes with the modernisation of the operations of the Nigeria Immigration Service.
“The modernisation is going to be all-encompassing: training, recruitment, promotion, professionalism, capacity building, and deployment of cutting-edge technologies.”
The minister further said the timeline for recruitment into the services would be released soon and warned interested Nigerians to avoid patronising fraudsters.
“This is to appeal to Nigerians not to patronise scammers. Anyone 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,” he added.
The heads of services at the meeting included Adepoju Carol Wura-Ola, comptroller-general of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Ahmed Audu, commandant-general of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), and Abdulganiyu Jaji, controller general of the Federal Fire Service (FFS).
Haliru Nababa, controller general of the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) was also at the meeting.