The Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) Command of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), has organised a capacity building programme for its personnel on how to improve passengers’ experience travelling through the gateway.

The Comptroller of the MMIA Command, Odide Kalu said it is part of the enhancement in officers’ capacity to enable passengers and other users of the airport with memorable impressions, with professionalism, respect and integrity.

Odide said the NIS, in its drive to push for service excellence, continues to engage its personnel with the required investment in capacity development.

He said for this reason, the command has been organising a series of engagement programmes with different leadership experts to boost the knowledge base, re-orient the attitude of personnel at the nation’s borders for pleasant treatment of travellers either coming in or going out of the country.

Speaking on the essence of the programme, The Command’s Public Relations Officer, Yakubu Yarus said human capital development is increasingly gaining traction in the NIS, as the training of officers has become one of the cardinal policies of the Comptroller General of Immigration, Mrs Kemi Nandap.

Describing the exercise targeting all officers of the command as the first leg, Yarus said other layers of the training will be carried out in the coming days.

Facilitator/Lead Speaker at the programme, Mr. Fela Durotoye urged the NIS personnel to recalibrate their perspective about service delivery, in a manner that projects their organisation in the best perception in the public eye.

Speaking on the theme: “Value – Based Leadership for Service Excellence “, Durotoye harped on key ingredients including humility, collaboration, respect and appreciation as key drivers in achieving a lasting impression.

According to Durotoye, to make a huge impact on passengers travelling through the airport, NIS officers and men must pursue and build trust in order to have a good experience.

He urged Immigration personnel to adopt a paradigm shift in the way they render services to passengers/ travellers passing through the airport in offering the best experience.

Dorutoye urged them to add value by giving a good account of their conduct in a manner that will stimulate good reputation, create outstanding records as well as engender respect.

He said :” The whole idea of this training for personnel of the Nigerian Immigration Service is to scale up their understanding on the best ways to demonstrate good hostmanship while dealing with passengers coming into the country to create a good experience.

“Airports as the first and last points of contact require that the personnel discharging duties in such places demonstrate the highest level of professionalism, show empathy, and conduct themselves in a manner that leaves a good impression about the people and the country.

“This is felt by the kind of impression passengers have about people deployed to discharge responsibility at such border posts.”

Speaking further, Durotoye said plans are afoot to consolidate training for the 14 agencies attached to the airport on how their personnel could achieve a single positive impression on service delivery.

He said: “The whole idea of this training for officers deployed to the airport is how they could add value to their responsibility as they attend to passengers at the country’s entry point. Given the huge number of passengers passing through this airport, the impression passengers have of their service experience remains critical.

“How do we choose people to give the best service experience? This requires us to continue to imbibe in the people. This is why we have embarked on a project called One Impression, for the 14 agencies at the airport to train the agencies’ personnel to uphold a pleasant impression.”

Also speaking, second resource person, Mr. Victor Ani- Laju harped on the essence of purpose leadership urging the personnel to cascade the lessons drawn from the training to their everyday responsibility.