7 months on, no job redemption for stampede victims

To pacify the nationwide outrage that trailed the incident, and also as consolation to the bereaved, President Goodluck Jonathan announced automatic jobs to family members of the deceased, assuring that all injured applicants were to get a slot each. To further address the lapses that ruined the recruitment exercise, the government in a statement by […]

To pacify the nationwide outrage that trailed the incident, and also as consolation to the bereaved, President Goodluck Jonathan announced automatic jobs to family members of the deceased, assuring that all injured applicants were to get a slot each. To further address the lapses that ruined the recruitment exercise, the government in a statement by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Anyim Pius Anyim, set up a panel to conduct a fresh exercise within 12 weeks.
Part of the panel’s guidelines was to ensure that three family members of each deceased applicant, at least one of whom should be female, were given immediate employment in to the NIS.
Responding to questions from reporters at events to mark 50 years of the NIS in Abuja, the Minister of Interior, Mr Abba Moro, who was widely blamed for the botched exercise, remarked that the ministry was waiting for the panel to conclude its work before enforcing acting on Jonathan’s directives. It was the first inkling that nothing in fact has been done to assuage the pain of those affected. Moro’s explanation that ‘the delay may not be unconnected with the cumbersome nature of arriving at the final list’ stretches credulity. The panel should by now have specified criteria by which persons who were injured or lost their relations in the failed exercise could be confirmed and attended to. An authenticated list of those who took part in the exercise in addition to a precise definition of ‘the injured’ could have helped the committee to resolve some of the issues pending before it, including the verification of victims, within the 3-month timeframe it was given.
Seven months is too long a period not to have resolved all issues relating to the matter and conducted a fresh exercise. Making it an open-ended task with no time limit, as the minister appeared to suggest, is a serious administrative lapse that places the victims in serious jeopardy.
For hundreds of affected applicants or the relations of the deceased ones waiting eagerly to hear the fulfilment of the presidential pledge, it would have come as something of a big letdown that Mr Moro had to wait until he was asked of their plight by journalists before disclosing to the public about the delay apparently being experienced in carrying out the presidential directive. Most of the affected persons complained that the minister’s office and the NIS had become brick walls when they tried to inquire about the progress in carrying out the presidential directive. This should not be case, given its antecedents.  
The national unemployment rate is high, no doubt, and the affected persons form part of the figure.  But the circumstances of their being considered differently should be taken into account. The presidential directive should therefore be implemented without further delay. The failure by government officials to act on pledges they make does not portray the government in good light. Rather, it sends a wrong message of government’s insensitivity.  It is the duty of the Minister of Interior to ensure that those who qualify to be employed in to the NIS are given the job in line with the terms of reference of the panel, including the automatic placement of those who suffered injuries and the families of those who died in the stampede.