Death for the jobless

The cancellation of the ill-fated recruitment of various cadres for the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, by President Goodluck Jonathan can only alleviate the injury inflicted on the nation’s psyche by the Ministry of Interior. The President, as usual, has failed to read the mood of the nation correctly. Just like he prevaricated in dealing with the ‘Oduahgate’ scandal, he has chosen to sleep over files and memos instead of doing the needful as a political leader.

Offering automatic employment slots to families of the dead and those injured amounts to mere tokenism, although a commendable gesture. It will not bring any succour to those who lost their children, nor will it minimize the grueling pains suffered by thousands of job seekers who went through the hellish experience engineered by the Minister of Interior, Mr. Abba Moro, and his incompetent team.

The national tragedy is symptomatic of the decadence in national leadership right from the top. It calls to question the managerial ability and decision making process in our national institutions. We shudder to imagine that a Minister in Jonathan’s cabinet cannot plan a fool-proof examination for half a million candidates. It is inconceivable that ministry officials will ask all 522,652 applicants to troop out in one day when the examinations could have been spread over one week, inviting them in batches.

Relying on information given by Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, chairman of the Senator Committee on Interior, the minister had appointed his crony, one Drexel Technical Global Services, as a consultant to collect N1,000 from each of the prospective 700,772 applicants who filled the recruitment form on-line. An initial screening qualified 522, 652 who turned up for the examination nationwide last Saturday. Whereas the Ministry and NIS had pocketed over N700 million, they both failed woefully to organize a decent recruitment exercise that has only 4,556 vacancies. So where has the money gone? Only Moro and his men can provide an answer.

Across the country, 16 job seekers were trampled to death. Many, who probably left home without breakfast, fainted under the scorching heat. And in a graphic illustration of deplorable emergency management, the victims, dead and still alive, were conveyed to the hospital in pick up vans. There were no ambulances on duty. We recall that the Senate, last year, intervened by calling the NIS to order when it bungled an earlier attempt to recruit new men and women. Immigration officials were subsequently indicted, but Moro, whose overbearing influence is choking the agencies under him, received no reprimand, thanks to the stature of his god father in government.

It is proper to scrutinize the claims by the federal government that many jobs have been created by its intervention schemes and programmes, namely, agriculture sector, SURE-P and You Win. Finance Minister, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had often praised the Jonathan administration for creating 1.6 million jobs, especially for the youth. Many state governments have also reeled out fantastic figures of jobs created. All the claims fly in the face of hard facts which confronted the nation last Saturday. Government officials must return to the drawing board, wear their thinking caps and provide the enabling environment to create massive jobs in the public and private sectors.

As the nation picks the pieces of this embarrassing and vexatious episode, we urge President Jonathan to make a scapegoat of incompetence and impunity under his nose by sacking Minister Moro and others connected with the mishandling of the NIS recruitment exercise. Merely cancelling it will not assuage the grief caused the nation as one large family. More importantly, we must learn  some lessons from our bad experiences.