The ghost of the tragic Saturday, March 15, 2014 Nigeria Immigration Service’s (NIS) recruitment exercise, which claimed the lives of over 10 people and was trailed by heartless extortion of about N1000 from each of the applicants, which yielded millions of naira to the NIS and its cohorts, seems to be still haunting and hounding the nation. We recall that the NIS, going by reports, had only about 4,000 job openings; and had called for applications from job seekers through adverts. Over 500,000 desperate unemployed persons applied. Despite the huge harvest of extorted funds from the jobless, the NIS organised chaotic interviews for them in virtually all its chosen venues nationwide which, in the end, claimed the lives of between 11 and 18 persons in stampedes.
Notwithstanding the loss of lives occasioned by the shoddy exercise; and grave allegations of corruption that trailed the recruitment drive, not one NIS official was brought to justice, to public knowledge. But to pacify the families of the dead and injured job seekers, former President Goodluck Jonathan promised automatic employment for three members of the family of each deceased applicant and all those injured during the stampedes. The then President had on Wednesday, March 26, 2014, announced the setting up of a committee to carry out the exercise within 12-weeks. But over 13 weeks after the expiration of the committee’s time-frame, the president’s ‘automatic’ job offers were still hanging.
Reports, instead, had it that the presidential job promise had given birth to a ‘wound racket’; as scores of dishonest job-seekers laid siege to the National Hospital, Abuja in their attempt to be listed among those wounded in the NIS recruitment stampede shortly after the Presidency announced automatic employment as compensation for the relations of the dead and the wounded. Nevertheless, about 176 members of the immediate family members of the dead were given appointment letters which were reversed almost immediately, purportedly because of the lack of provision for their salaries. Protest by the disappointed ‘employees’ to the National Assembly prompted the House of Representatives to conduct a public hearing on the matter; and the lawmakers’ insistence that “the 176 people with letters of appointment deserve employment based on the presidential directive; and it will be in our collective interest… everything should be done to restore their appointments”.
The contempt with which the hierarchs of the Ministry of Interior treated the directive of ex-President Jonathan buttressed not just the grave extent of indiscipline now entrenched in the nation’s public service, but how conscienceless and self-serving the operators of the system have become. Indeed, it took the House’s Majority and Minority Leaders, Femi Gbajabiamila and Leo Ogor, in that order, who presided over the public hearing, to lecture the likes of the Permanent Secretary in the Interior Ministry, Abubakar Magaji; Deputy Comptroller of Immigration, Henry Malgwi, who represented the Comptroller-General; and A. A. Ibrahim, Secretary of Board, Fire, Immigration and Civil Defence services, on how to go about their jobs. “If you collect money from students and fill a stadium, where was the salary going to come from in the first instance? Salaries are not given by the President; there is something like supplementary budget which the National Assembly has power to approve. I advise you effect these people’s employment in arrears and put their salaries in the supplementary budget”, Gbajabiamila told them, for instance.
We salute the House of Representatives for exposing the unconscionable conduct, insubordination, indiscipline, sheer wickedness, ineptitude and ignorance trailing public service delivery in the land through its interventionist public hearing on the plight of the distressed 176 members of the immediate families of the dead NIS job seekers. From the lacklustre response, feigned or veiled ignorance of the Interior Ministry officials at the hearing, however, it is obvious that the beneficiaries of the presidential job offer may wait for eternity if the lawmakers fail to mount intense pressure on them to do the needful.
Besides, the rhetoric that the Interior Ministry and NIS are ignorant of the location of the monies extorted from job seekers who partook in the ill-fated NIS interview of last year is unacceptable. Not being in office when the heist was perpetrated is not enough reason to know nothing about the ill-gotten fund, since there is continuity in government. The lawmakers should dig deeper in search of the funds. Perhaps by so doing, the visible and unseen hands behind the dubious and bloody NIS interview would be tracked and brought to justice.
