The proverbial masquerade danced naked at the House of Representatives last week as the ad hoc committee probed allegations of job racketeering in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), with the alleged active connivance of officials of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS).
At the investigative hearing on job sale at the Federal Character Commission (FCC), the chairperson of the agency, Mrs Muheeba Dankaka, struggled to wriggle out of the shameful admission by her former protocol officer, Mr. Haruna Kolo, that funds running into millions of naira, squeezed out of desperate unemployed persons, had been funneled into the chief executive’s bank account. The scene at the public hearing demonstrated the level of moral decadence among public officials and, more unfortunately, how policies, rules, regulations and systems are abused, bastardized, and rendered ineffective in Nigeria.
Though Mrs Dankaka, on live television, swore and invoked curses upon herself, in her attempt to assert her innocence of the act, the true position of things will only be ascertained when the investigation is concluded. We commend the House of Representatives for summoning the courage in these early days of the 10th National Assembly to embark on this important probe. We encourage the ad hoc committee to do a thorough job and ensure the implementation of the recommendations that would emerge from the work it would do.
Before the House set up the probe panel, the media in Nigeria had been awash with stories about the alleged secret recruitment of children and wards of influential persons in the society into juicy MDAs without due process. Also were allegations of mercantile recruitment in civil and public services , a practice that allegedly compelled young Nigerians to look for money from wherever to pay millions of naira for job slots. The context of the alleged fraud was well-known. Since 2016, the erstwhile administration of Muhammadu Buhari placed an embargo on employment in government agencies.
However, there have been allegations that waivers were secretly issued to some chief executives of MDAs to recruit some staff members as replacements for retired employees or those who may have passed on. Instead of throwing those vacancies open for qualified Nigerians to apply and compete, the jobs were allegedly given to either the children of the rich and well-connected or to those who could raise money to pay for them, sometimes as much as N1.5 million or thereabouts – because there was an embargo on employment.
At the investigative hearing last week, two persons who claimed to have coughed out that huge sum of money in order to get jobs that paid about N150,000 per month at the Federal Character Commission (FCC) held the audience spellbound by their stories on how they raised the bribe money. The ugly deal took on the nature of organized crime when it was alleged that some persons who made such payments were enrolled on the IPPIS, ostensibly as ghost workers, as they received salaries from the federal government’s coffers without rendering any service .
The irony in the revelation at the National Assembly last week stems from the fact that the allegations were made at the FCC, a body that should ensure the principles of equity and fairness are adhered to in the recruitment of Nigerians into positions in all MDAs. If the allegations are proved to be true eventually, it means the chief executive officer of the FCC and all the commissioners of the agency have made a huge joke of an important Act of the National Assembly that set up the FCC. What the ad hoc committee discovered last week may just be a tip of the iceberg, as there have been allegations of job racketeering in government agencies for a long time.
Now that the 10th assembly has put its hand on the plough, it must not turn back – this probe must be carried out to a logical conclusion. Nigerians have witnessed similar spectacles at public hearings, where lawmakers threatened fire and brimstone against government officials who abused their positions, but were let go with a slap on the wrist. It will be a great disappointment if the committee fails to carry out a thorough job after it has raised the hopes of Nigerians that something tangible will be done.
We call on the federal government, as a way of halting these secret recruitment’s, to lift the embargo on employment, which has created the opportunity for public servants to rip-off young Nigerians in need of jobs. Stories abound of how in many cases, agents of CEOs of MDAs collected money from poor Nigerians, but never delivered the jobs. Also, we call for the cancellation of all secret recruitments conducted in all MDAs in whatever name from 2016 till date, so that a proper recruitment process may be followed in filling those vacancies. Through job racketeering, many incompetent people were given responsibilities for which they did not qualify, while the qualified were abandoned on the street to, at most, enter the unsustainable informal sector. The least the probe panel and government should do is, after a thorough investigation, bring everyone found culpable to book in a public show.
