Why Abba Moro must be sacked Ordinarily, I should have been writing in celebration of the phenomenal performance of Governor Peter Gregory Obi of Anambra State during the last eight years when he left indelible marks of the landscape of my dear state, as he hands over to Chief Willie Obiano, the new governor and his successor, today. My piece would have been an ode to the lofty performance and unparalleled dedication to duty. However, as Ndigbo say, when a farmer encounters something bigger than his farm, he would usually auction away his barn with all the yams in it. I, therefore, find myself today, saddled with the sad predicament of writing a dirge instead of an ode. The most untimely death of about 20 young Nigerians – by the last count – and the injuries sustained by scores more last Saturday, while seeking employment promised by the Nigeria Immigration Service. is one of the greatest tragedies of the recent times. I do not know which rankles me more, the fact that their death and injuries were easily avoidable if the people involved with the NIS recruitment process had anything called brains, or the completely moronic explanations that were cavalierly volunteered by the Interior Minister over the event. Through the lens of a television station, the minister, Abba Moro, blamed the carnage on the ‘impatience of the candidates’, saying that his Ministry would learn from the mistakes of the day. Unfortunately and clearly put, what happened and their circumstances amounted to a premeditated murder of innocent Nigerian citizens whose only offence was that, as graduates in their different disciplines, they had gone to seek places in the advertised vacancies that exist in one of their nation’s agencies. Simply put, they died and were maimed because they had gone to seek a legitimate means of livelihood and would have in the process served their fatherland with their education and youth. Many of them ended in morgues while others are vegetating on hospital beds, while even many more went home, deflated, forlorn and empty-handed. Such impossible stories have become a regular companion of the Nigerian today. The job spaces advertised by the Nigeria Immigration Service have a sordid history behind them as they had cost the former NIS Comptroller-General, Mrs. Rose Uzoma, her job, when she was accused of lack of transparency in the collation and shortlist of candidates for the advertized jobs. Some inside sources had, however, claimed that Uzoma’s main problem was that there were too many big shots that were interested in the NIS jobs which had, in any case, been allegedly shared out to the high and mighty, even before the applicants could be invited for the recruitment tests. It was also claimed that it was the sharing formula, rather than any act of misdemeanour on the part of the former NIS (who was obviously benefiting in the sharing), that had brought about her sack and the suspension of the job recruitment then. Last Saturday the NIS invited the over 620,000 applicants, who had paid N1,000 each, by sms to different venues to take part in the so-called aptitude tests in a manner that showed both extreme insensitivity and an unparalleled stupidity. For instance, using the Abuja centre as a handy example, over 60, 000 candidates were herded into the National Stadium with the capacity to hold much less number of people. They were asked to come at 6 am while the so-called tests did not start till late in the afternoon. Not only were the candidates – university graduates, don’t forget – were said to have been herded into the stadium through one gate instead of the more than the 30 gates of the stadium, they were made to sit or wallow around there under the scorching sun for hours unattended to, hungry and thirsty. This situation was replicated at equally uncomfortable venues in all the other 36 states of the country in different levels of confusion. Stampede by desperate and frustrated candidates was inevitable and it happened at Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Benin, Minna, etc, with fatal consequences with the effect that at the end of the day, 20 youths lay dead, while many are currently nursing injuries of varying degrees. It was obvious that the confusion and mayhem that reigned supreme at all the centres stripped the exercise of every iota of transparency which the Interior minister claimed he was trying to achieve by inviting that inordinately large number of candidates in one day and clamping the hundreds of thousands of people into a concentration camp-type of situation. The tragedy of last Saturday, as many have insisted, was easily avoidable because, the NIS job is not one of the juiciest or most sought-after in the country and so, it would be wrong to believe that the large number that turned up is directly proportional to the level of the nation’s graduate unemployment. For, as has been found out, about half or more of the candidates at that recruitment exercise are people already with jobs as was evidenced by the large number of cars that were parked around the venues of the tests. In fact, the roads around the National Stadium remained blocked for most of the day on Saturday on account of those vehicles. There were also those already employed even in the federal government service that had also turned up for the tests. Such has become the situation in Nigeria whereby those who are already employed are always on the quest of ‘better’ employment, which, in any case, is a legitimate aspiration. It is however doubtful if what applicant seek in such jobs as the NIS one is better salary and not the other illegitimate sources that the Service has become famous for. However, NIS recruitment was not the only one that has experienced such a population of job applicants to have necessitated the type of confusion that overwhelmed the organizers last Saturday. In fact, the military services, the Police and such para-military agencies like the Customs often experience greater influxes during their job recruitment exercise. However, it was the lack of competency and insensitivity on the part of the Interior Ministry and the NIS that made the difference and precipitated the national tragedy of last Saturday. It was even claimed that the consultants that conducted the tests might not have been hired for their proven proficiency but rather for whom they know, and it showed clearly last Saturday. The beauty of today’s technology which provides for job applications online has inbuilt solutions that have made such tragedies unthinkable. For instance, the fact that the NIS job applicants had submitted their applications online enabled the NIS and its consultants to know the population of the applicants and the number that they can cope with at any tests based on the number of vacancies to be filled. In this case, we hear that there were about 4000 positions for which the NIS had invited 650,000 to tests in one single day! A totally unnecessary act which Moro explained away as transparency! It is simple commonsense that the NIS computers should have been programmed with parameters that would have pruned down the number of candidates to a manageable size of say, 100, 000 across the states. Such parameters would have eliminated say, older graduates, people already with jobs, etc. That is what other better organized agencies like the Customs and the Army do. Moreover, is it not irresponsible in the main to expect candidates to conduct written tests in stadia and open spaces? In places like Awka, the candidates that numbered in their thousands were required to sit for those exams in a primary school that can hardly sit up to 500 pupils. It should have been expected that a para-military organization like the Nigeria immigration Service would have been more sensitive about crowd control. Yet, Moro insults the nation’s intelligence with his unacceptable excuse of the impatience of candidates. The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) every year conducts exams for more than one million candidates in one day and nobody ever reports any incidence of failure in crowd control. How can the NIS justify the fact that it does not realize that the number of people sent to the various venues were too many for those venues? Does it require the knowledge of rocket science to ascertain the sitting capacity of the National stadium for instance? Rather, the truth remains that our government agencies and the people that boss them are increasingly becoming bereft of respect for the ordinary Nigerian, especially the unemployed youths. It is even tragic that those Nigerians should suffer and die even as most of the candidates had suspected that they were engaging in a mere formality as the higher percentage of those jobs they were struggling for might have already been shared out by the powers that be and they were merely fulfilling all righteousness. That fact should have made our people in positions of power to treat the ordinary Nigerian with greater respectability. Herding Nigerians into enclosures in the same way Adolf Hitler herded the Jews to the concentration camps where they were gassed or scourged to death is clearly unacceptable to Nigerians at this stage of our national development. It must be even more unacceptable to President Jonathan who has made a cult of his ‘shoeless’ origins and who has gained great mileage by his perceived humble and humane dispositions. That is why the stay in office of the Interior minister and Comptroller-General of Immigration beyond this week would be seen by hurting Nigerians as the president being complicit in this unconscionable inflicting of injuries on the Nigerian people and their psyche. For, those who died and those who were injured, including the pregnant and nursing mothers, through the act of commission and omission of some square pegs in round holes in his government, stood in the gap for all Nigerians. Their death, injuries and humiliation must not be in vain and the sacking of all those who were responsible for it and the payment of hefty compensations to the relatives of those who died and suffered is only a reducible minimum of what Jonathan’s government should do immediately in order to assuage a part of the national shock that now pervades the land. It is remarkable that the president sacked the Sports Minister for what has been alleged was his act of disloyalty and had suspended the CBN governor for acts of financial recklessness and other acts unbecoming of a person occupying such an elevated office. The circumstances that resulted in the death of 20 promising Nigerians on Saturday as well as the injury on many more as well as the national disgrace which the incidence has engendered through the wide coverage of the global media make the cases of Sanusi and Abdullahi to pale into insignificance. Nigerians demand nothing less than the sack of those who have brought such unwarranted pain to the families and the nation. It was very disappointing that the PDP had only asked for the investigation of the incident without prescribing the immediate sack and punishment of the culprits. That was very insensitive and a further testimony that the political class has not been wizened up to the dire consequences of building an army of discontented people especially the youth. For, what happened last Saturday could have easily brought about a national implosion. Has anybody sat down to contemplate on what could have happened if those Nigerians who were stranded all across the country had decided to “occupy” their various staging posts and had refused to go home? Your guess is as good as mine. Nigeria must come to a stage when the citizens, their interests and fate, must start to count. Saturday’s tragic event must become a watershed in the thinking of the government as well as in the redefinition of their understanding of their responsibility towards those who willingly surrender their loyalty and obedience to them. Let those that run our affairs take lessons from other societies appreciate that, as the French claim, it is a “little drop of water that overflows the can”. The failure to punish those who caused the national pain last Saturday might become that ‘little drop of liquid’. More ominously, I have heard many threaten that if Jonathan does not make an example of the likes of Abba Moro and his lieutenants, they might reconsider their support for the president. - Uche Ezechukwu (Capital Matters, 17th March, 2014)
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 06:44:20 +0000
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