Immigration tragedy: Experts want better recruitment process

Analysts have criticized the procedure adopted by the NIS and the Abba Moro-led Ministry of Interior for the conduct of the exercise. According to them the entire exercise appears mired in abuses, exploitation, corruption and impunity.President Goodluck Jonathan in recognition of the poor handling of the exercise immediately cancelled it and constituted a committee to […]

Analysts have criticized the procedure adopted by the NIS and the Abba Moro-led Ministry of Interior for the conduct of the exercise. According to them the entire exercise appears mired in abuses, exploitation, corruption and impunity.
President Goodluck Jonathan in recognition of the poor handling of the exercise immediately cancelled it and constituted a committee to conduct fresh exercise. He announced automatic employment in the service for three relations of dead victims one of whom must be a female. He also announced automatic employment for injured applicants.
Despite this, analysts believe the country has a lot to do in tackling unemployment. For them, a situation in which thousands of job-seekers would confront the odds and risk their personal safety on jobs openings which they had slim chances of obtaining, is a clear reminder of the challenge facing the country.
A recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics places unemployment rate at 23 per cent. The country also has an active population of 60 per cent, who fall into the age bracket of 15 to 64 years, out of 170 million people.
This seeming desperate situation was partly responsible for the immigration recruitment tragedy. The poor treatment of about one million job applicants in a vacancy of 4, 500 shows that the country has failed to adopt the best practices in recruitment procedure, says Innocent Onwu, an Abuja based legal practitioner.
“We are not treating ourselves fairly as a nation. In some other climes and even some agencies even here in Nigeria, when you come for employment they will treat you fairly such that you would want to go into that employment. If you see the way the others, like the NIS treat applicants, you are discouraged. Recruitment in Nigeria has become tug-of-war.
“I think when people want to recruit, they should be prepared, plan and make the logistics available and make the applicants form a good impression of the organisation.  If it is morning, they should prepare light refreshments like tea or snacks.
“If they had divided the immigration applicants, they would have been able to treat them better after all they have collected N1,000,” he said.
Constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, Mike Ozekhome (SAN) also criticized the procedure adopted by the NIS in the recruitment exercise.
“The no peccadillo conduct of Abba Moro is further amplified by the fact that these applicants who arrived at the aptitude test venue as early as 5:00a.m. did not get tested until about 5:00Pm, 12 hours later.
“Consequently, the applicants were exposed to the brutal and debilitating harshness of the afternoon scourging and baking sun, without any respite. With the constant pushing, pulling and shoving, garnished with extreme hunger of most of the applicants who had neither breakfast nor lunch, the stage was set for a replication of the Hobbesian state of nature,” Ozekhome said.
The need for job applicants, and by extension actual employees, to be treated well is perhaps emphasized by Elton Mayo in his Hawthorne Works experiment in the 1920s which determined that enhanced conditions of work raised the level of productivity.  The research laid the basis for human relations in the work place.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) also condemned the methods adopted for the immigration exercise. The President of the congress, Abdulwaheed Omar said it was grossly unfair to assemble thousands of youths in one stadium for “to compete to fill miserly four thousand vacancies.”
The NIS had advertised for positions ending last year and directed interested applicants to visit the CDFIPB Online Recruitment Portal after paying the sum of N1, 000 in a process managed by Drexel Consulting.
Joseph Onu a civil activist, who said job applicants ought to be treated with respect and dignity, said the funds realized should have been used to run the recruitment exercise.
“Taking money from applicants is totally illegal. However, where they take money, that money must be for running the process of the recruitment not for profit.  I see nothing wrong in doing an online assessment for applicants. There is nothing wrong when you know you have 4,500, you put a ceiling for say the first 10,000 applications and the site closes. That will now show the must hungry and serious applicants thereby screening out about 700, 000 applicants. You can still do an online test for the first 10, 000 to further reduce it 5,000 from where you can now conduct oral interview,” he said.
According to Susan Craig, a hiring consultant, the standard hiring process involves transparency and competitiveness. As a start, a committee is set up to conduct the exercise. It is that committee that does site screening, gather preliminary information for prospective candidates, shortlist successful applicants, and conduct selection interviews for final hiring decisions. According to her,  it is important to call up applicants who failed to meet the requirements.
As the country continues to create more jobs to take care of the high number of unemployed youths, it is imperative to tackle the anomaly recorded in the NIS recruitment exercise. The country should adopt international best practices in recruitment procedure.