Immigration: Job offer or citizens’ massacre?

Thus as crooks are wont to do, every step was thought of except that weak layer that would cause the plan to collapse, and collapse it did, disastrously taking the lives of innocent youth. Educated, yet starved of employment, they were offered a promise that was empty from the start. At the price a life, […]

Thus as crooks are wont to do, every step was thought of except that weak layer that would cause the plan to collapse, and collapse it did, disastrously taking the lives of innocent youth. Educated, yet starved of employment, they were offered a promise that was empty from the start. At the price a life, N1,000 plus travel logistics, they chased after the promise by their thousands. Parents who sent their children to that interview were shooting their children as arrows to a future in hope that they would hit the target and begin to earn payment for work, feign for themselves and win bread for the family. Alas for seven or so, the story is tragically different. The entire investment of their birth, nurturing, education and compulsory national service came to naught, taking away God-given life.
I picked up the story as I landed in Nigeria from a trip that had proved a painful experience. I had boarded an Ethiopian Airlines flight and the equipment in use was a Boeing 777 – the type that had just been swallowed up by the universe without a trace -Malaysian Airlines Flight 340. My anxieties shifted from fear of the unknown to resignation to fate, and then anger, as soon as I was settled in the aircraft. Poor Ethiopia could still efficiently run a national flag carrier as do Kenya, Ghana, Cameroun, Gabon and many others, I mused, yet Nigeria, has citizens too smart to operate such.  Ethiopian Air has a fleet of 777s and indeed took me to my destination in a dream liner, the Boeing 787. I was too covetous to enjoy the flight. We Nigerians are now covetous of ones that were once covetous and hateful of us.
Then I landed in Dubai whose facilities are designed for mass movement and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of foreigners that fly in and out, everything works like the (not the Nigerian) clock on the wall, with a great many Nigerians helping attain the efficiency as diligent workmen. There was a conference in which thousands of exhibitors participated, and thousands more of delegates in attendance. Yet there was order that nullified congestion in a venue the size of Abuja’s Eagle Square, yet under an air-conditioned roof. This orderliness frustrated me because though possible in Nigeria, remains unattainable for the simple reason that our leadership lacks the capacity and the followership are uninspired to demand. Just a few days in Dubai, I could take no more. God has endowed Nigeria with enough to beat the Dubai act! I scheduled instant departure, to my country where the going events then were the massacres in Katsina, and of course insurgents taking on the Army in broad daylight in Maiduguri, threatening to overrun the barracks! In one week, over 300 Nigerians died in Katsina, Benue, and Borno.
I watched the immigration chief on Aljazeera very clearly elated and proud that over 60 thousand applicants had turned up for the recruitment exam and interview – the National Stadium Abuja was filled to capacity. Then it hit me. Each of those jobseekers had applied on line for N1000 meaning that for 60,000 Immigration Service raised revenue of N60m and much more. There were no limitations of age or qualification – thus whoever could afford N1,000 applied. Was it morally justified to exploit the unemployment situation which implies our failure as a nation to literally fleece expectant gullible job seekers to a ploy to raise revenue? Of course not! We were without scruples as long as “revenue” was earned. There were not 6000 jobs available (there were only 4550 openings) and there was no justifiable reason for such a murderous ploy. The main reason for this diabolical plan was not to recruit men and women into the immigration service, but to profiteer without rendering any commensurate service. Many departments and agencies of government often take to this path to raise revenue and sadly, this stampede at the Immigrations exercise is a repeat of occurrence at other similar attempts, with loss of lives without rebuke. When shall we learn enough for this to stop?
The stadium seats are numbered according to the various gates. Why did every ticket to the interview not guarantee a specifically numbered seat and designated gate?
How do you administer a recruitment exercise that involved over 60,000 in one location when you could have easily weeded those who were eligible from the thousands that applied online nationwide?  Was it not easier managed if each state comptroller administered the exercise in their states, to weed and produce a list for central evaluation? The whole incident is a display of poor capacity for modern management and has so portrayed us to the global community. We pride ourselves as the giant of Africa only to display such foolishness in handling our affairs based on greed and corruption.
There was no immediate reaction to the fact that Nigerians died in a fraudulent recruitment exercise further gone awry.  And when one came, it was indicative of how high up the recruitment sham got endorsed. It was the Minister of Interior Abba Moro who blamed the victims saying they were impatient! Newspapers quoted Moro speaking from Jos, away from the Abuja incident, 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 insecure”.
According to the minister, 520, 000 people applied for the exercise across the country, the centres were spread to avoid overcrowding such that even Lagos had to be cancelled. There was no reported sympathy for the lost lives – the dead died because they were impatient and got involved in a stampede.
The Minister must be told that the cause of the stampede was the inability of the Immigration Department to manage the recruitment exercise. There are efficient means of managing a crowd of 60,000 applicants, but to assemble thousands of youth, burdened by the frustration of joblessness and the anxiety of a seeming availability of vacancies too few for the turn out, is to court impatience. Abba Moro should hear what the survivors are saying. To begin with, they believed that the recruitment was “as man know man” and that nepotism, favouritism, “long leg” and corrup-tion had already narrowed chances. Given our various scarcities, who would believe there was reason to expect the crowd to be calm and not impatient? With the incompetence displayed in this recruitment attempt, is there any wonder that our borders are declared “porous” when our neighbouring countries are in full control of who goes in and who comes out through theirs.
Abba Moro may be unaware, but the incident only laid bare the despicable condition of unem-ployment in Nigeria, to which government has been speaking glibly of hundreds of thousands of jobs supposedly created through schemes like Sure-P, YouWin et al. If we covered this shame, it is now globally exposed as a promise made and a promise not kept by the government.
In compassionate democracies, a probe would be ordered into whether what happened was avoidable and the best that should have happened. Where rulers had conscience, the President would have sacked all involved with such sham. Abba Moro would have resigned for letting happen, what he should have prevented. Seven lives were lost, but who gives a damn? Blame it on impatience, says the patient administration.