The Nigerian Immigration Service
(“Service”) advertised for job openings and demanded that poor,
unemployed young men and women pay N1000 each to be part of the
recruitment process. According to the Minister of Interior, Mr. Abba
Moro, 520,000 applicants paid the money and participated in the
recruitment exercise across the country last Saturday. Out of this
number, only 4,556 would be recruited at the end of the exercise, based
on the available space. Before the Saturday event, the Service had
stated the venues for the exercise across the 36 states of the
federation and the Federal Capital Territory on its website.
Essentially, the Service had an idea of the number of persons it was
dealing with across the federation.
The first issue arising from this
arrangement is that the Service organised a scam. N1000 from 520,000
persons amounts to N520million. This is insensitivity, greed and
outright fleecing of fellow citizens. It is illegal, immoral and can
never be justified in the imagination of right -thinking men and women
that a government agency, funded from the public budget and maintained
at tax payers’ expense, should be turned into an engine of fraud to get
money out of the unemployed and the poorest of the poor. There is no
indication as to what has happened to this huge sum of money. Has it
been paid over to government coffers? Is this the new way government
intends to raise revenue? Should money be raised through the blood of
the innocent? Is this a form of taxation on the unemployed or is it a
punishment for their being unemployed? Government exists to alleviate
the burden of the people rather than increasing their burden. No, the
Service thinks otherwise!
Continue reading after the cut...
The most critical matter arising from
this recruitment fiasco is the fact that no fewer than 20 Nigerians
have died and many more have been injured. The only offence of the dead
and the injured was that they needed a job. There were reports of
stampedes and struggles to get question papers, pushing and shoving,
leading to deaths and injuries. To insult the sensibilities of
Nigerians, the Minister of Interior was reported as saying that the
applicants “lost their lives due to impatience; they did not follow the
laid down procedures spelt out to them before the exercise. Many of them
jumped through the fences of affected centres and did not conduct
themselves in an orderly manner to make the exercise a smooth one. This
caused stampede and made the environment unsecured.” He stated that the
Deputy Comptroller, Immigration Operations and Passport, told him that
he cancelled the exercise in Lagos due to the unruly behaviour of
applicants. Apparently, the Minister, Abba Moro, has been blinded by
the money collected from the applicants that he cared no more about
their humanity. They are expendable persons whose death can be explained
away with a wave of the hand. He has no sense of sympathy, empathy and
fellow feeling. And this is a man in a position of authority over
reasonable and decent men and women. As the leader of the ministry, was
he not supposed to shuttle between the “battlefronts” of Lagos and Abuja
which recorded the highest number of applicants? Rather, he was in Jos;
doing what?
But these deaths and injuries were
avoidable and raise a number of questions. What was the crowd control
measures put in place for this exercise? What were these laid down
instructions the minister referred to? Did the Service conduct crowd
control drills before the exercise? What were the specific instructions
to the applicants given to them before the exercise? Did the Service
involve the Police and other security agencies knowing full well that
they were likely to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of participants
at the exercise? Individuals organise music concerts attended by
thousands of persons and there are no stampedes. Football matches
attract full capacity in a stadium and no one dies. All these happen
because there is a plan and strategy for crowd control and this is
implemented to the letter.
The right to life is the most fundamental
of all the fundamental rights and it is the fulcrum upon which other
rights rotate. Rights are only for the living and dead persons have no
cognisable rights. The Constitution forbids the taking of life except in
accordance with the due process of law. It states that no one shall be
deprived intentionally of his life, save in execution of the sentence of
a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found
guilty in Nigeria. It further provides that a person shall not be
regarded as having been deprived of his life in contravention of the
law, if he dies as a result of the use, to such extent and in such
circumstances as are permitted by law, of such force as is reasonably
necessary – (a) for the defence of any person from unlawful violence or
for the defence of property: (b) in order to effect a lawful arrest or
to prevent the escape of a person lawfully detained; or (c) for the
purpose of suppressing a riot, insurrection or mutiny. The deceased did
not die under any of these lawful exceptions. A man or an agency is
expected to anticipate the natural consequences of his actions and
omission. The leadership of Service, gathering hundreds of thousands of
young men and women without any regard to their lives and safety is
guilty of murdering the deceased. The leadership of Service has the
blood of the innocents on their hands and should be made to pay for this
criminal act.
The sheer numbers that applied for this
job demonstrated the level of unemployment in the country. Government
officials keep lying and deluding themselves on the number of jobs
purportedly created under makeshift policies. But they are not in a
position to show concrete examples beyond sweeping generalisations. The
Service had to organise the recruitment exercise in stadia across the
country to accommodate the number of persons attending. Where are the
jobs created by YOU WIN and SURE-P? How long can this deceit last?
There is a way forward. Abba Moro and the
Controller General of Immigrations should resign. They should tender an
unreserved apology to Nigerians, especially to the families of the
victims. The Attorney General of the Federation must ensure the diligent
prosecution of the crimes supportable by available facts. No cover-up
this time. The money collected from the applicants must be returned to
them. This is a huge lesson for young Nigerians whose future has been
mortgaged and stolen by the mindless organised syndicate in government.
For those who sit at home during rallies for change and and believe that
manna will fall again from heaven, the message is clear. If things do
not change, there are no jobs and you may never get one. You may even
die in the search for one. But I do not wish you evil. It is the hard
truth. The road map for our liberation is clear and we need
collectively, to legally and legitimately fight for our rights.
- Eze Onyekpere/Punch
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