The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, Alhaji Abubakar Magaji, has said that the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) could not allow victims’ relatives of the ill-fated recruitment exercise to commence work after issuance of appointment letters because of “procedural errors” caused by the Presidential Committee on the incident.
Magaji disclosed this on Tuesday when he along with others appeared before the an Ad-hoc Committee of the House of Representatives set up to probe NIS failure to employ relations of the victims as directed by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The permanent secretary, in his presentation, declared that neither the ministry, nor the Civil Defense, Fire, Immigration and Prisons Board (CDFIPB) was carried out in the ill-fated recruitment exercise in 2013.
This, according to Magaji, has led to the present predicament of the victims’ relations, who are the beneficiaries of a presidential directive on automatic employment as compensation to the bereaved families.
They have all been given their letters of appointment since March, but could not start work ever since, which the permanent secretary blamed on non-provision funds as salaries for the new recruits in the ministry’s 2015 budget.
He said after issuing the appointment letters, the ministry had to halt the process since there was no written approval by the President for the employment.
“We are also hearing it from media. There was no letter directing us to employ this person or this number of people,” he added.
He said it was only the chairman of the presidential committee that effected the recruitment unilaterally, which made it difficult for the ministry to factor the new recruits into its salary payroll in its current budget proposals.
Asked about the action taken by the ministry after the deadly stampedes across the country, Magaji said he was not in the ministry when the incident happened, even as there was no official record left for him by his predecessor to that effect.
He said even the then minister of interior “was angry” that they issued appointment letters based on the directive of the committee’s chairman, who did not work for the ministry.
On his part, NIS Comptroller-General, represented by deputy Comptroller-General, Henry Malgwi, said the service had already issued appointment letters to some victims’ relations when the Permanent Secretary ordered them to stop.
Malgwi said the immigration, which only statutorily issues recruitment letters of junior cadre officers, was not aware of the initial exercise in 2013 which led to the deaths of many applicants.
The three-man House committee asked the NIS representatives of the custody of N1,000 charged per head for the over 6,000 applicants, to which the deputy comptroller said: “We don’t know where the monies collected from the applicants have been. In fact, we were not aware of that exercise. We only saw it on newspapers advertised by the Board.”
Malgwi told the committee that security verification has found that 15 applicants died in the stampede, while 131 were injured nationwide.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila told the permanent secretary and the comptroller-general that there is an impression that the recruitment exercise advertised for only 2000 vacancies “was a scam to make money.”
He said that instead of shifting blames and saying there is no salary for the 176 beneficiaries given appointment letters, the ministry ought to have approached the National Assembly with a supplementary budget for the purpose.
Recall that families of the deceased and injured victims of the ill-fated recruitment exercise of 2013 last Thursday stormed the National Assembly to protest the refusal of the Federal Government to fulfill its promise of employment as compensation as they were still yet to start work after employment letters were issued them.
Speaking on behalf of the group while addressing the representatives of the House of Representatives, who came out to meet with them, Mr. Edmund Osumah, said that after one year and six months since the incident, they were yet to get an explanation as to why the appointment letters issued have not been ratified. – Leadership.
