The ill-fated recruitment exercise carried out by the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) is one among many negative issues yawning unfriendly at President Goodluck Jonathan in the electioneering year. As pressure mounts on him to sack his Interior Minister, Abba Moro, pundits say this as another litmus test for the president. GEORGE AGBA examines the development.
Uneasy lays the head that wears the crown” is an age-long term which fits into President Goodluck Jonathan’s predicament at the moment as a leader of Africa most populous country. Just as one would have expected that he would soon wriggle out of one quandary, another problem, often more grievous than the previous, arises and stare him in the face.
It is even more of a piteous fate for the Otuoke born university teacher when it is considered that he is not directly the cause of the legions of problems stalking his presidency.
The recruitment exercise conducted by the Nigerian Immigration Services (NIS) at different venues across the country which led to the death of over 20 Nigerian job seekers is the latest of such precarious situation the Jonathan presidency is contending with at the moment.
Apparently, the gory incident on that fateful Saturday in which unemployed graduates, including three pregnant women died as a result of the stampede which occurred at Benin, Port Harcourt, Lagos, Abuja and Minna is another litmus test for Jonathan to prove his discretion as a leader.
Some Nigerians are calling for the removal of Interior Minister, Comrade Abba Moro whose ministry supervises the NIS, while others insist the consultancy firm that conducted the recruitment exercise should be made to pay dearly for the national disaster.
While the tragic incidence is under investigation as ordered by the Senate, some other set of Nigerians considered in government circle as unhealthy subjects to hasty generalization are opining that nothing would happen to the embattled minister because Senate President, David Mark will be right on track to save his job.
But what do these individuals think of President Jonathan; that he is naïve and impractical leader who is always willing to bow to pressure from influential elements within the hierarchy? Keen observers say they are waiting curiously to see how it goes.
But history has a way of vindicating the just. Nigerians can’t claim to have forgotten so soon the last recruitment exercise by the NIS in 2012 which ended in a flop. The problem with that particular exercise was that it was done surreptitiously without advertisements.
And most persons alleged that its nepotistic approach was a ploy to favour candidates from one part of the country above other. The House of Representatives Committee on Federal Character summoned Mrs Rose Uzoma who was Comptroller General of Immigration then.
Despite the defence she put up that the NIS conducted the employment exercise in a classified manner because it didn’t want to admit terrorists into the Service, President Jonathan approved Uzoma’s sack in January 2013, just three months to the end of her tenure.
The exercise was eventually cancelled. To ensure a more transparent exercise, the NIS decided to openly advertise the instant case of recruitment which led to the death of the over 20 Nigerians.
Just like the last one, the storm blew again, even more horrifically. Apart from the death toll recorded, the issue of candidates being charged N1,000 each for the registration process is projecting the federal government in bad light. The thinking is that a government that would ask its jobless citizen to pay for a recruitment process must be crude and insensitive.
But what is the president’s own in the recruitment saga? There is no inkling so far that Jonathan intends to shield anybody. Some days after the tragic event, he summoned the minister and the Immigration boss, Paradang to his office where he grilled them for hours before proceeding to the inaugural ceremony of the National Conference. He was said to have informed them that whatever the outcome of investigation into the matter may be, they were on their own.
Sources in the president’s office told LEADERSHIP that Moro got the bashing of his life for saying the applicants were the architect of their own misfortune. Jonathan, it was learnt, asked the minister to explain what he meant by saying the applicants lost their lives due to impatience and not following the laid down procedure spelt out to them before the exercise.
Since then, the minister has kept mum on the issue, save for his associates and family members who have been running from pillar to post to give him a clean bill of health.
On Sunday, someone who claimed to be Moro’s cousin, Major Agbo came out to say he was speaking on behalf of the minister’s family. In a statement, he quoted the Moro family of accusing the consultancy firm which conducted the exercise of doing a clumsy and shoddy job.
Agbo said, “If the consultancy firm had done its job properly, it would have carried proper online screening of the applicants with the aim to prune down the size that would be invited for the screening exercise having in mind the existing vacancies.
“We do not want to be in a hurry to indict the consultancy firm that handled the exercise in order not to preempt the investigative panel already in place but will at the interim condemn the shoddy and clumsy fashion with which the exercise was conducted.
“As the Head of the ministry, the task of overseeing the conduct of the exercise rested strictly with the Minister through the CG of NIS, what happened at the field did not reflect the numerous assurances received by the Honourable Minister from the consultants that all was going on smoothly”.
“On sensing that indicting the recruitment firm would add salt to the minister’s injury, another family member who identified himself as Chief Joseph Moro disassociated the family from the statement issued by Major Agbo.
He described Agbo as an impostor who probably had been employed by the opposition to do a hatchet by rubbing the minister in the mud. Chief Joseph shifted the blame for the recruitment tragedy to the opposition, even as he suggested that since the stampede happened in centres within the opposition states, the opposition party must have masterminded the disaster to colour the government in power bad.
What the blame game appears to be implying is that Comrade Moro is on his own as President Jonathan rightly told him. Aware that if nothing is done fast enough to launder his image before the president and other powers that be, the minister’s job would be in the pipeline.
In this regard, Major Agbo said, “The Honourable Minister has gone down in history as one of the best local government chairmen Benue state in particular and the country in general has had, having served as ALGON chairman in Benue and having received numerous awards as best serving local government chairman in the federation in the past.
“The Honourable Minister has over time, been known as a man of integrity, honesty, dedication to duty, thoroughness, commitment and we are still at a loss as to what probably may have gone wrong with this exercise. The Honourable Minister is a member of the family and known seriously for his respect for sanctity of lives of people and cannot in anyway, celebrate the death of any human being as being insinuated in some quarters, but will however show respect for the opinions of individuals who have painted him in different light other than what we know about him”.
On his own, the president has taken positive steps to placate Nigerians and the family of the dead jobseekers. He cancelled the recruitment exercise that claimed their lives. Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku noted after last week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) that the president’s cancellation of the recruitment exercise came with a directive that families of the deceased should be given three slots each in the Nigerian Immigration Service to be filled by their family members in the fresh recruitment, adding that one out of the three must be a female.
He said a special committee chaired by the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FRSC), Mrs Joan Ayo had been set up by the president to conduct a fresh recruitment exercise to fill the vacancies in the Nigeria Immigration Service.
But like a phoenix, the controversy trailing the tragic death of the unemployed graduates in the ill-fated recruitment exercise got a life of its own the next day after the president reeled out his palliative measures.
Four Nigerian lawyers last Thursday dragged the federal government to court where they are seeking to enforce the fundamental human rights of the applicants who participated in the gory exercise.
In the suit filed before a Federal High Court in Abuja, the four legal practitioners namely, Charles Ugwuonye, Friday Danladi Yakson, Chinedu Rosemary Onwuka and Samson Ojo invoked the jurisdiction of the court, praying for an order to enable them enforce the fundamental rights to life, protection from inhuman degrading treatment and right to dignity of the human person.
Other rights being sought for by the applicants under sections 33, 34, 42 and 44 of the 1999 constitution and the equivilant of articles of the African Charter on human and peoples rights act include right against discrimination on the basis of the circumstances of birth and right against unlawful taking of a person’s property.
The plaintiffs, in an affidavit in support of their application told the court that the president’s statement promising the victims of the recruitment debacle “automatic employment” is not only a cover up for the incompetence demonstrated by the relevant authorities but is also lacking in credibility, “as it failed to specify the people it defines as a victim, given that the dead applicants cannot possible accept any employment from the Government of Nigeria.
“The pronouncement by the President or the Presidency offering ‘automatic employment’ to the ‘victims’ is merely a ploy to disunite the victims and prevent them from seeking justice as united group”, the 45-paragraph affidavit deposed to by Mr Chris Ebosie noted.
It is certainly not the best of times for the president. Every step he takes to address the recruitment saga would always be interpreted to mean something else.
With the 2015 general elections tingling around the corner, pundits believe strongly that negative occurrences like the tragic recruitment exercise is not a good omen for a president whose political ambition had received series of knocks even before it was hatched.
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