Recruitment scandal: Moro cannot investigate himself!

They knew their chances of employment were slim but still showed up more in hope than expectations. A majority had probably gone through the same ordeal several times in the past. An even greater majority may have been spent over ten years after graduation from tertiary institutions seeking for the illusive jobs to no avail. […]

They knew their chances of employment were slim but still showed up more in hope than expectations. A majority had probably gone through the same ordeal several times in the past. An even greater majority may have been spent over ten years after graduation from tertiary institutions seeking for the illusive jobs to no avail.  
That was why, when the Nigeria Immig-ration Service advertised 4,556 vacancies that may have already been allocated to pot-bellied politicians in Abuja and elsewhere for distribution to relations, girlfriends or even touts, a reported two million applicants stormed 37 screening centres set up for the purpose across the country even without ‘prequalification’.
To ‘pre-qualify’ the desperate candidates were forced to part with a thousand naira each, a tidy sum even for the gainfully employed in these rough times. In any other country except Nigeria, the plight of those young men and women would be the major pre-occupation of the government and leaders at all levels. But here, we have abundant evidence of the Immigration Service under the supervision of the Interior Ministry actively exploited their social predicament.
Beyond the tragic and needless deaths of 20 applicants – including pregnant women – at various recruitment screening centres a record was actually set. Since the House of Representatives had repeatedly issued resolutions against the extortion of monies from jobs seekers by any MDA, the entire process was easily the biggest mass robbery of unsuspecting individuals from a single operation in the history of this country.
According to a report in the Daily Trust yesterday, a record seven million applicants paid the mandatory eligibility fee before they could be attended to! Conservatively, over 7 billion naira must have been realized at the expense of the hapless applicants for the non-existent jobs in a country with a rich reputation for advance fee fraud!
And in typical Nigerian fashion, since the first objective –the illegal extortion of one thousand naira from each candidate – was already fully achieved, they forgot to make appropriate logistic arrangements for the screening exercise because they already knew it was a farce. Even the mandatory physical screening of the candidates had to be shelved for reasons not totally dissimilar from the first.
Sadly, but quite predictably, because the entire process was a charade, we are left to contend with the gruesome images of mangled bodies, and shattered limbs in filthy overcrowded morgues, in a nation where human life has also become very cheap and easily expendable.
If ever the government needed a wake-up call, or another painful reminder, that the massive number of unemployed youth in the country was like ticking time bomb, the images that confronted us last Saturday was the final conclusive proof it required to act decisively. But I doubt if they will still summon the requisite political will to do the needful even after Saturday’s tragic events.
Let us pause for a while to contemplate what would have happened had the applicants somehow summoned the ‘un-Nigerian’ courage to protest their treatment like their peers repeatedly do in other parts of the world. What if they had poured onto streets in Lagos and Abuja to spark a minor revolution?
Their massive numbers would surely have made them an unstoppable force except if the government was prepared to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale to stop them. The crowds were that big, but they simply licked their wounds and dispersed in typical Nigerian fashion. Most would probably be guests of pastors of new generation churches the next day in the illusive quest for prosperity even when they have routinely fail to help themselves’ by exhibiting responsible citizenship.
By responsible citizenship I refer to the inalienable rights and responsibilities of Nigerians to protest against bad governance within the confines of our laws. Stripped of its pretences, it also means being sensible to know when they are being hoodwinked by inept politicians on the basis of primordial sentiments in the guise of a dubious transformation agenda.   
That is why all responsible Nigerians must insist on unravelling the truth about this infamy. Those found wanting must face the full wrath of our laws. And it goes beyond the need for the unconditional refund of the monies extorted from the unfortunate job seekers, or the need to adequately compensate families of the deceased victims of the monumental tragedy.
In the next days and weeks there would be a lot of debates on the what exactly happened last Saturday, but none are ever likely to address the root causes of the problem. There may even be an attempt to politicize the tragedy but we must remain vigilant against that.
The Nigeria Immigration Service, like the other Para-military services, has not been immune from political interference in recent times. Scores of immensely qualified candidates’ senior to the current Comptroller General, David Paradang, were forcefully retired on the altar of political expediency to make way for his emergence. The same template was applied to the changes of leadership in the Army, Air force and the Navy.
But it will be wrong to blame the Comptroller-General alone for the sordid impasse. The buck ultimately stops on the table of the Interior Minister Abba Moro. He supervised the intrigues that produced Paradang in the first place and, as a result, continues to view and treat the service like an extension of his own office.
Those who know, claim that the service was stampeded by the minister to embark on the ill-fated exercise against the advice of the CG and his lieutenants and we cannot deny the damning evidence. Unlike in the past, the entire process coordinated from the Minister’s office! He directly supervised the exercise in Plateau state.
For those reasons the minister has no business constituting any panel of inquiry to probe anybody. Decency demands that he steps aside for the duration of the probe. In more civilized climes, he should have turned in his resignation letter by now, but that will be wishful thinking giving the kind of country we live in.
Ordinarily, in such circumstances, the National Assembly would be expected to champion the removal of the Minister, but under the incumbent Senate President David Mark, who is reported to be the minister’s godfather, we may as well perish the thought.
In a tragedy of unquantifiable proportions, under Mark, the Senate has increasingly acquired the semblance of an extension of the executive arm it was conceived to check. It now gives serial approval for most of its abuses and even brazen constitutional infringements. When the president effectively usurped its powers by removing the CBN Governor S. L. Sanusi by pretending to have only suspended him, Mark defended the Senate’s inaction by conveniently declaring that the matter was already sub-judicial.
The same applies to the House of Representatives only to a lesser degree. While its leadership appears to be stoic and uncompromising, most of its Committees have not been as honourable in their oversight of the MDAs assigned to them. The general frustration also extends to the judiciary.
Its processes and endless procrastination on landmark cases of corruption continues to embarrass all right-thinking Nigerians all over the world. High profile criminals freed by our courts are swiftly convicted and jailed by foreign courts for the same offences only for them to return home to petition the presidency for their treatment!
Either way, we must insist on Justice for the victims of last weekend’s regrettable demonstration of graft, incompetence and abuse of office. With our porous borders and rampant insurgency, the Minister of the Interior should have been on the fringe of Lake Chad trying to find solutions to our porous borders. He had no business supervising a mere recruitment exercise for the NIS which competently handled the same thing without major incidents for years in the past.  
He has no business constituting investi-gative panel. A judicial Panel of Inquiry must be urgently constituted to investigate him and any other person that perpetrated this infamy.