Moro must face the music There was shock, consternation and outrage all over Nigeria last week at the national shame and tragedy otherwise called Nigeria Immigration Service [NIS] recruitment exercise that took place nine days ago. Over half a million applicants trooped into the Immigration recruitment test centres around the country on that day. A crush and stampede followed in almost all the centres that left at least 16 persons dead in Abuja, Minna, Port Harcourt and Benin. Scores of others were also injured in a test that was conducted without any structure or supervision, according to the hapless victims. All of them were made to pay a thousand naira each, in addition to having to buy and adorn white t-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes in alleged preparation for a physical test. The deaths and injuries sparked nationwide anger and also widespread calls for the firing of Interior Minister Comrade Patrick Abba Moro and Comptroller-General of the Immigration Service, David Parradang. A group of 55 senior activists and politicians issued a statement in Abuja saying the Minister and the Comptroller-General must be held to account for the deaths. “If the lives of Nigerians mean anything, the leadership and management teams in the Ministry of the Interior and the NIS must be held to account for these deaths,” the statement said. Among the signatories were former NRC presidential candidate Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa and chairman of the Nigeria Human Rights Commission Dr. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu. They said, “This tragedy was needless, foreseeable, and avoidable. The failures of the Ministry of the Interior and the NIS to adequately manage the process and safeguard the safety and security of the jobseekers is inexcusable.” They also asked the Attorney-General of the Federation and the Police Inspector-General to open a joint criminal investigation into the deaths. Many National Assembly members also added their voices to the calls for the sacking of Moro and Parradang during floor debates last Tuesday. In the wake of the public outcry, President Goodluck Jonathan moved by incremental steps to salvage the government’s battered image. Last Monday, he issued queries to Moro and Parradang to explain what happened. Two days later, the president cancelled the Immigration recruitment exercise. Information Minister Labaran Maku said after a meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) that Jonathan constituted a special committee under the chairmanship of the chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission to conduct a new recruitment exercise. Other committee members are the Immigration Comptroller-General, representatives of the Inspector General of Police, Commandant-General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Director-General of the State Security Service, Controller-General of Prisons and Corps Marshall of the Federal Road Safety Commission. Maku said Jonathan also directed that three automatic employment slots at the Immigration service be reserved for the relatives of each of the deceased and one slot for each of the injured applicants. One of the three beneficiaries from the deceased’s families must be a female, he added. This attempt at placation sparked off another racket with desperate job seekers flooding the National Hospital to try to get a medical report of injury so as to qualify for automatic recruitment. Maku also said Jonathan instructed all ministries, departments and agencies, except the armed forces and police, to never embark on the kind of recruitment exercise conducted by Immigration Service. The president’s moves left many questions unanswered. Top among them are the personal fates of Moro and Parradang. The government did not even say whether it was going to probe what happened. However, there were indications that Parradang too may have been a by-stander in the whole exercise. Several newspaper reports said Moro completely sidelined the Service in the recruitment exercise and instead dealt with a consultant, Drexel Nigeria Limited. Another newspaper report described Drexel as a dead company that has not filed its annual statements with the Corporate Affairs Commission since 1994. Matters worsened for Moro when the board of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence, Prisons and the Federal Fire Service blamed him for the irregularities that overshadowed the recruitment exercise. Mr. S. D Tapgun, a commissioner in the board, disclosed this when he led the board members and heads of agencies under the ministry to the House of Representatives committee on public accounts. He said, “Only the Interior Minister and the consultant he engaged for the exercise can tell Nigerians exactly what happened. Even the Comptroller-General of the Service was not involved. He was not part of the recruitment at all. There was no board resolution to recruit anybody.” The Presidency is also silent about the fate of the estimated N700 million collected from the applicants by the consultancy company that handled the recruitment, based on the figure of 700,770 jobseekers who submitted applications. As a matter of fact, we have written several editorials over the years decrying the penchant with which government agencies engage consultants and go on to amass billions of naira from hapless job applicants in the name of online processing fees. The greed and scam inherent in this process came out in full in last week’s fiasco and we urge the Federal Government to save more lives, limbs and hapless applicants’ money by putting a stop to such “recruitment” scams once and for all. That the whole exercise was just a scam was buttressed by a report in Daily Trust, which quoted sources as having said that most of the job slots had been shared out in advance to state governors, ministers, senators and Representatives for them to fill with their chosen candidates. In other words, young Nigerians lost their lives, limbs and monies in vain. This must not stand. Abba Moro, a man who styles himself “comrade,” which suggests a pro-people orientation, callously conceived, plotted and unleash upon hapless citizens a scheme that is essentially aimed at self-enrichment. His so-called consultant and himself carried out this callous scheme without the slightest regard for the safety of young Nigerians in order to hoodwink them into thinking that the monies collected were justified. Moro and Drexel should face the music for this.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 11:43:06 +0000
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