The
Senate yesterday resolved to investigate all the recruitment exercises
conducted by all the Federal Government agencies in the last two years,
with a vow to punish perpetrators of employment scams in the country.
The decision followed allegations of
widespread recruitment irregularities that include selling of job slots
to job applicants for as much as N500,000 per slot.
Two of the senators gave personal
testimonies on alleged cases of selling jobs, with one of them
confessing that he offered money for a job slot to help a well-qualified
job applicant from his constituency.
Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume (PDP,
Borno) told the Senate that, out of compassion, he once paid a sum of
N200,000 for a job offer in a government agency for one of his
constituents, a second class upper graduate of Geography.
Senate Leader Victor Ndoma-Egba also
disclosed that many of his constituents had approached him to no avail
for N500,000 per job offer in government agencies.
Touched by these and other
testimonies, the senators resolved to launch a through investigation
into all recruitments done by all the ministries, departments and
agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government in the last two years.
Adopting a motion sponsored by Senator
Abubakar Bagudu (PDP, Kebbi Central), the Senate directed its
Committees on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs and
Labour, Employment and Productivity to probe the recruitment exercises
of the federal agencies.
Senator Bagudu brought the motion on
floor of the Senate over alleged employment irregularities in the
Nigeria Immigration Service and other MDAs.
Contributing to the debate, Senator
Ndume confessed that out of compassion, he once paid a sum of N200, 000
for a job offer in a government agency for one of his constituents.
He said: “There was a boy from my
constituency who graduated with second class upper and could not get a
job for four years. He had been driving a taxi for someone in Abuja here
before he came to tell me that one government agency was collecting
N200,000 from each job applicant.
“I did not want to give him the money
because I couldn’t imagine that kind of thing could be happening, but he
was begging me and in the end, I gave him the money. When he went there
to pay the money, they told him the charges had gone up to N400,000. He
was honest enough to come back to me to return the money I gave him. I
asked him ‘what should I do again?’ He said he would be grateful if I
should just give him the money to buy his own taxi which he is driving
in Abuja today,” Ndume said.
Giving his own personal account,
Senate Leader Victor Ndoma-Egba, said: “For me, it is not a mere hearsay
because I was directly approached severally by my constituents for
N500,000 for job offer in government agencies, but I declined because I
couldn’t imagine something like that happening in our country.
“The recruitment exercise has gone
that bad in this country. This kind of situation, if not checked, would
cause dynastic poverty as only the children of the rich would be getting
jobs, while the children of the poor would be shut out.
“The implication of this is that we
are planting a time-bomb in this country. We should direct our relevant
committees to investigate the recent recruitment in all the ministries,
departments and agencies of government, and whoever involved should be
punished.
“Until we are able to punish people
for this crime, the insecurity we have in this country today will be a
child’s play,” said Senator Ndoma-Egba.
Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu
described as a mirage the recruitment exercise and deployment of staff,
saying ministers in particular were taking undue advantage of their
positions to manipulate the recruitment process in favour of their
cronies.
In his contribution, Senator Ayogu Eze
(PDP, Enugu) described the job scam as a symptom of a failing state,
saying the public service should be recovered from those holding it
hostage, especially the Federal Civil Service Commission which,
according to him, is doing “disgraceful things” in recruitment exercise.
Senator Chris Anyanwu (APGA, Imo) accused the Federal Character Commission (FCC) of foisting mediocrity on the nation.
She called for the establishment of
what she termed as whistle blowers in all the MDAs to halt the trend,
saying otherwise, “we’d have social unrest as a consequence”.
On his part, Senator Smart Adeyemi
(PDP, Kogi West) said the nation is drifting due to leadership failure.
He said all those found guilty of recruitment scandal must not go
unpunished.
Senators Suleiman Adokwe (PDP,
Nasarawa), Boluwaji Kunlere (LP, Ondo), Ita Enang (PDP, Akwa Ibom),
Dahiru Kuta (PDP, Niger), Heneiken Lokpobiri (PDP, Bayelsa) and Abdul
Ningi (PDP, Bauchi) described the unemployment rate in the country as
frightening and the recruitment scandal, a national disgrace.
They all insisted that all those found to be involved should be sanctioned accordingly.
Earlier in his lead debate, Bagudu
noted that employment letters were allegedly offered for sale between
N400,000 and N500,000 and that recruitment exercises favour some states
at the expense of others.
Senate President David Mark alleged
that the Federal Civil Service Commission, charged with the
responsibility of recruitment, was most guilty because “they also want
to look at federal character.
“They are the ones that should know
the available vacancies and recruit accordingly, but there is real
unemployment in the land leading to desperation by those wanting to be
employed and by those wanting to take advantage of the situation”, he
said. “This is truly a very serous thing, and we can minimise it by
government and private organisations” creating jobs.
“As long as employment is limited, the desperation will be there,” he said.
Employment scandals in many federal
agencies had earlier prompted the House of Representatives to launch
similar investigation last month.
The House Committee on Federal
Character said that illegal recruitment practices are so widespread that
they affect almost all federal ministries, departments and agencies.
They are also so pervasive that rooting them out requires an all-out
effort and prosecution of the perpetrators, the committee noted.
The chairman of the committee Ahmed
Idris told our sister publication Sunday Trust that his committee has
discovered that almost all the federal agencies are involved in one form
of recruitment malpractice or the other.
He said the situation is so bad that all the agencies need to be “investigated and monitored”.
The committee, he said, has long been
conducting the investigation. “And those chief executives of agencies
who deliberately violate the provisions of the constitution will be
prosecuted because we have found out that they now hide under the guise
of replacement to favour their people,” he said.
DailyTrust
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