If this government has been making efforts to dissociate itself from practices of the past, it has clearly not done so in reassuring the people of its will to be fair in offering equal opportunity to all. The Buhari-led government is facing a moral crisis over employment scams, with the two major institutions caught in the act accused of offering jobs without any advertisement or subjecting the hired to any established professional procedures.
In March, the Central Bank of Nigeria found its secret recruitments blown in the media and fiercely criticised by citizens. The plum jobs were offered to children of the politically privileged, following a familiar pattern of nepotism expected to have been identified and discontinued by the change-advocating government.
And while the country is yet to get over its anger over CBN’s nepotistic recruitments, the Federal Inland Revenue Service was exposed in its own employment scam, with hundreds, marked as beneficiaries of a system of recommendations and secret dealings.
This privileging is a known tragedy that has contributed to the collapse of our public institutions. Sometimes, the beneficiaries are not guilty of partaking in the unprofessional conduct, they are only lucky to have a parent, relative or someone who knows someone in involved in the scam. And a scenario occurs this way:
You get a call from a Big Man who is kindhearted, or has been told remarkable things about you. He invites you over. You honour the invitation and there is a job offer. For you. No competition. No stated qualification. No test. Just like that.
A friend once told me similar thing. That he was offered a job by a relative in power, and because he had a pending contract at a more well-remunerated, he recommended another person. If the job is meant to be for just anyone, don’t you think t would’ve been advertised, he was told. Pointblank.
And this tradition of employment scam is the reason I get hurt anytime I read Nigerian public servants boasting about their exceptionalities, and what made them the best of a pack, in memoirs and authorised biographies. Nigeria is a fount of incredibly educated and talented people, and whoever makes it to the top should, at least for honesty’s sake, not romanticise such privilege or consider it proof that s/he is the best.
The President has to intervene at once to save our public institutions and preserve and maintain the principles they uphold. This shouldn’t be perceived as a partisan demand, but a sincere reform to make this country a place of equal opportunities to all, and of especially a redeemed lower-class.
The more we defend every inaction of the government – whether deliberate or obvious oversight – the longer the tenure of our misery. This depends on one’s class of origin. Many must’ve changed several shoes since they embarked on their futile job-hunts, but those dream workplaces from CBN down through DMO to FIRS are being occupied by fellow Nigerians, some of them new graduates who “accidentally” have famous surnames or know one.
I’ve at least five close friends who had no idea how their names first got listed for some of these recruitments defended as “secret hiring”, and they all lamented how they were “invited” to Abuja (their place of residence!) where they stayed for days, were lodged in the best hotels, and pampered as a sort of initiation into the most “lucrative” agencies of the nation’s public service.
If you think the system will fix itself, remain silent and pretend to see no wrong in these. This isn’t about the President. These recruitment scams are an aspect of administration he is likely unaware of, even though we expect him to address them. Nigeria isn’t a private enterprise of any social class. May God save us from us.
