Immigration tragedy: Jonathan’s hollow response

Minister of Interior, Abba Moro

THOSE who might have expected a far-reaching response from the government to the shabby conduct of the recent ill-fated Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment interview that claimed 23 lives, including that of four pregnant women, cannot but be deeply disappointed at the half measures announced last week. However, in a country where people get away with all manner of heinous crimes – from mass murder to electoral fraud and treasury looting – it is only reasonable not to place much hope and expectations on government actions and decisions.

After the Federal Executive Council meeting last week, all the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, had to say about the incident was that three members of each family of the unfortunate victims would be rewarded with a job at the NIS. He also announced employment for each of the numerous others that were injured in the stampedes resulting from overcrowding at the interview venues. Surprisingly, he was silent on the brains behind the sham interview, which is where his briefing should have started.

Although Nigerians have become so used to losing innocent lives in their scores on a daily basis, there is no justification for the government to pretend as if it is normal for 23 lives to be gratuitously wasted. And having done that, those responsible, namely the Interior Minister, Abba Moro, and the Comptroller-General of NIS, David Parradang, are left with a pat on the back and the usual admonition to “go and sin no more.” This is wrong.

From the account that everybody is now familiar with, over 500,000 job-seekers had been summoned in one day for interviews to fill 4,556 vacant positions at the NIS. It is obvious that whoever had that brainwave should have reduced the crowd to a manageable short-list, if commonsense had been allowed to prevail. Unfortunately, it was not so. The resultant  stampedes and deaths could only have been attributed to bad planning and execution, for which both the minister and the comptroller-general must be liable, even if it is vicariously so.

In fact, in climes other than ours, they should even resign before being asked to do so. In Turkey, for instance, three ministers, Zafer Caglayan, Economy; Muammer Guler, Interior; and Erdogan Baryaktar, Environment, tendered their resignation days after their sons were taken into custody in a corruption and bribery scandal. Similarly, the case of the Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Khan, is still very fresh. Four days after his arrest for allegedly sexually harassing a hotel maid, Naffisatou Diallo, he resigned his post as the International Monetary Fund President. It did not matter that all charges against him were eventually dismissed by a New York court after the District Attorney declined to prosecute. And in situations where the affected officials fail to go on their own, it is the duty of the President to fire them. This is why President Goodluck Jonathan should sack Moro and Parradang.

From what was gleaned from later reports, the actual slots available for the 526,650 applicants were just about 240, after politicians and senior officials of the NIS had been allotted slots for their own candidates. If it is considered that each of the applicants was required to part with N1,000, it is easy to understand that the motive behind the whole thing was the money, a whopping N520 million, at least. This is blood money that should immediately be returned to the applicants, who would not have had to go through that harrowing experience if the unemployment situation had not been as bad as it is today.

Also, it was gathered that during the FEC meeting, which reportedly focused on the recruitment tragedy, Jonathan warned heads of government departments and agencies “to desist from organising fatal exercises similar to the one conducted by the NIS under the guise of recruiting staff.” This is just an excuse for not taking the right action of disciplining those behind the recruitment scam.

The palliative measures of announcing employment offers to family members of the dead victims could only have been meaningful if it had come as an addition to the main action of taking punitive measures against culprits in the matter. It can never be satisfactory as compensation for the lives of the lost citizens.

Moro and Co. must act properly by stepping aside. Many will easily recall that a similar thing happened in 2008, when the same NIS and Nigerian Prisons Service jointly conducted this kind of interview, resulting in 17 deaths from stampedes and exhaustion. If the people behind that incident had been punished appropriately, perhaps, it would have served as a deterrent. This is why the culprits in this particular incident, including the consultants alleged to have been given the task, should be prosecuted in court and, if found guilty, jailed. That is the only way to give justice to the families of the victims.