Immigration scam and outrage!

The absurd episode claimed 19 lives of young applicants who participated/wanted to participate in the aptitude test by the ImmigrationServices. Their hope, in their desperation, following years of post-graduation joblessness, was to secure a job, at last. The futility of it all: the mindlessness in the mismanagement of the exercise and its symbolism it portends […]

The absurd episode claimed 19 lives of young applicants who participated/wanted to participate in the aptitude test by the ImmigrationServices. Their hope, in their desperation, following years of post-graduation joblessness, was to secure a job, at last. The futility of it all: the mindlessness in the mismanagement of the exercise and its symbolism it portends for the unresolved crisis of youth engagement through employment: is the instruction it bears on the state of national economy today.
Many causes, remote and immediate, distant and current have been advance for the disaster of March 15. Over seven hundred desperate, disillusioned, frustrated qualified young Nigerians, men and women were out there, scampering for a paltry 4,556 jobs at the Immigration Service. The have waited for at least three years, when the information was let out that the Office of the Head of Service had approved the recruitment of staff of varying cadres into the service.
This vacancy situation at the Immigration is a current confirmation of the frightening scale of unemployment in Nigeria screaming for urgent solution.It is also a telling revelation of government’s failure to create jobs and terminate the teething unemployment problems in Nigeria to which various schemes, plans and efforts have been made for decades.
The outage in the streets, among civil societies, government people like legislatures and concerned citizens are directed at various stake-holders who may have, by acts omitted and committed, ensured this needless stampede and the mortal repercussion from it. One of the obvious targets has been the Abba Moro, Minister of Interior, who has made valiant, if unconvincing, effort to wash himself clean of the crime. Next of course, is the government, on whose doorsteps, the buck of all national problems recline. Then the Immigration Service itself, the direct Agency affected, including, perhaps the directing Board.
All of these state-holders have been summoned, inadvertently, by public opinions, commentators, protesters, furiously and angrily, to probe the deaths, unveil the scam and its perpetrators, sack all probable’s and provide jobs forth for all and sundry and institute all-inclusive probe of the recruitment deaths. Beyond all these pious and righteous anger is the inevitable imperative of providing immediate, intermediate and lasting solution to the unemployment situation in Nigeria, which stands at over 50 per cent, with the youth at the receiving end of the problem.
Some of the immediate solutions demanded by the raving public include: paying adequate compensation for the dead and the injured. I quickly retort; how do you compensate the dead?, what compensation is adequate, commensurate with and fitting to irreplaceable lives lost?; government to provide for our youths, jobless fathers and mothers,) failing which government must resign! How are these to be accomplished?
Meanwhile, Government has made concessionary, palliative responses to assuage the frayed nerves of the irate populace. At the FEC, President Jonathan ordered immediate the cancellation of the recruitment exercise. He went further to set up a probe panel headed by the Chairman, Civil Service Commission, Mrs. Joan Ayo. Its critical term of reference is to conduct employment test for existing vacancies in the Nigerian Immigration Service. Other measures taken by government include offering the families of the dead three automatic slots for applicants at the Immigration?, one of which must be a woman. Some affirmative incentive, may be! But more directly at the ogas at the top who must bear the brunt, Ministers to be tried for culpable homicide if persons died during recruitment in agencies under their watch. Many say these immediate assuaging, nerve-tendering measures are tokenistic to the core! In this knowledge and technology age, inviting over 700,000  anxious and desperate applicants to the stadia for aptitude test is a recipe for stampede and mass suicide, when you could simply have screened through internet and slim the shortlist to  a manageable proportion of the number of vacancy  available.
Many of the protesting commentators find the response of the Minister and the agency, including government’s palliatives escapist and provocative, capable of exacerbating the incense in the air. Charles Ugwuonye et al, are pressing charges through action against government and related agencies. They are challenging Illegality of conduct of recruitment and a violation of applicants’ fundamental human rights to life, refund cost of application form at N1m each and N50m to deceased applicants as general damages.
National Assembly, some members of who are alleged to be culpable, sharing vacancies at the Immigration ahead of the recruitment fiasco, has made some tenable reactions. Their investigation revealed delayed recruitment approval granted by Office of Head of Service to recruit 4,556 applicants to various cadres since 2011. This, they contend amount to criminal negligence. Some are asking for the sack of the Minister of Interior and the Comptroller-General. From this happening, they warn politicians to begin to prepare to take cover for imminent revolution by the army of unemployed youths avoidable tragedy—a finger that points also to some among their ranks.
The Civil society-trade unions and NGOs- have condemned the scam and stampede and their lethal outcome. Some of them are investigating and have particularly called for the arrest of the Consultant—Drexel Technical Nigeria limited. They query the expertise and tested competence of Consultants? The Consultant, contend Nweze, is not a member of any known recruitment professional body. Nweze, who is the President of Outsourcing Professionals of Nigeria says further that the Consultant is not a member of his Association. What’s the basis for his engagement?  Besides Professional competence, there is allegation of inept and shady handling by the Consulting firm, Drexel Technical Nigeria Ltd. Failure to release the sum of N212m out of the N520m taken from the applicants for recruitment, Sunday Trust found out, chance is that, 19 job- seekers might not have died.