Recruitment Exercise: I have nothing to refund, no recruitment fee was imposed on applicants - Abba Moro

“I did not extort N700 million from helpless Nigerians who applied for employment in the ministry of interior, no recruitment fee was imposed on applicants,” 

By Ehi Ekhator

The Minister of Interior, Abba Moro who conducted failed and deadly Immigration Service recruitment which led to the death of 19 applicants including 4 pregnant women on March 15, has sworn not to refund the N1000 paid by the job seekers for the exercise.

Abba Moro, Minister of Interiora

Moro, during the exercise gave the recruitment to an agency which was later discovered as unregistered company, the pre-recruitment online registration raised more than N700,000 from more than 710,000 applicants, nation wide for the test.

Nigerians reacted and requested for Moro’s removal after the fail test and President Goodluck Jonathan order its cancellation and ordered that a new test be conducted which he said will be overseen by the government.

Though, the Senate after thorough investigation into the incident, revealed several violations in its planning and implementation and till today, the report of the investigation is still awaiting.

Femi Falana, a Lagos-based lawyer has earlier ordered that Moro refund the money collected from the poor applicant, in a letter dated April 9, replied to Falana, Moro stated that he could not refund any money since he did not personally raise any.

Moro alleged that applicants were not forced to pay the money for recruitment fee before applying

He said “I did not extort N700 million from helpless Nigerians who applied for employment in the ministry of interior, no recruitment fee was imposed on applicants,”

He said that services of a consulting company became necessary in order to ease the bureaucratic bottlenecks associated with recruitment exercise.

He said “Media reports that he extorted money from poor applicants were “misrepresentations”,

“In order to achieve result an online Portal (website) was emplaced, applicants were then required to access the portal through the purchase of 1000 scratch card,” he said.

“For the records, neither I, not the ministry of interior, nor the Board of Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prisons Services nor the Nigeria Immigration Service, was involved in the purchase of the scratch cards to access the portal,” he said.

“In fact, the board and the tenders’ board of the ministry of interior had approved that none other than the consultant should be involved in the process of purchasing the scratch cards and the processing of applications.”

As expected from Mr. Falana, he responded back to the Minister that he was responsible for the tragic exercise.

Falana said “Owing to the fact that you appointed a consulting company which extorted processing fee of 700,000 applicants you are vicariously liable for the actions of your agents including the tragedy which characterized the recruitment exercise,”

“Having publicly accepted responsibility for the loss of the precious lives of 20 of the applicants, you cannot turn round to wash off your hands like Pontius Pilate,” Mr, Falana said.

Falana reminded Moro that as a minister of government, he is not expect to convert funds extorted from job seekers as it is his duty to pay unemployment benefits to citizens.

“We have no alternative than to reiterate our demand for the immediate refund of the said sum of 7000,000 not later than April 18,” the letter reads.

Recruitment Exercise: I have nothing to refund, no recruitment fee was imposed on applicants - Abba Moro

NIS recruitment: I beg for your understanding - Moro begs Nigerians

By Ehi Ekhator

The Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, has begged Nigerians to forgive him over the death of 16 applicants during the last Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment.

Abba Moro, Minister of Interior

He made the appeal during weekend. He said he takes responsibility of whatever happened and added that the exercise turned deadly but was not meant to be that way.

He said “I think that I will ordinarily ask Nigerians for understanding in this matter, understanding the intention, understanding the motive behind the whole thing of an open, transparent recruitment exercise.

“That is the first of its kind into the services of Interior Ministry that was intended primarily to give employment to Nigerians, irrespective of their backgrounds, connections, contacts in government or the business circle,” he said.

The embattled Minister said that his intention was to correct the past errors by giving every Nigerians an opportunity to apply and get employed genuinely.

“For me, it is a personal loss because the exercise, in the first place, took place within the Ministry of Interior, organised by the Ministry and its services and so whatever consequences, positive or negative, that have come and in this instance, negative, I, as the Minister of that Ministry, under whose purview this exercise took place, where people lost their lives, certainly take full responsibility.

“I want to say repeatedly that the death of these young Nigerians who would have added value to human resource asset of this nation is highly regrettable. And for the families, I insist that my heart goes out to them because I am a father too.”

Moro denied having any disagreement with either the board or the Immigration Services’ official over the recruitment.

 

NIS recruitment: I beg for your understanding - Moro begs Nigerians

NIS recruitment: Abba Moro claims responsibility of applicants" death

By Ehi Ekhator

Haven’t caused chaos and death of innocent poor applicants, the Minister of Interior, Mr. Abba Moro finally claimed responsibility of the death of the applicant yesterday. 16 applicant died during the NIS recruitment exercise, including four pregnant women.

During the public hearing organized by the Senate Committee on Interior, the minister said he was still sadened by the circumstances that led to the loss of lives in the recruitment exercise.

But the Comptroller General of Immigration, CGI, David Paradang revealed that the service was supposed to handle recruitment exercise but was ignored.

A member of the Board of Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prison Services, Mustapha Zakariya alleged that the signature in the agreement where the Interior Ministry and the Board agreed to engage the services of the Consultant, Drezel Technology Nigeria Ltd was forged.

Paradang told the committee that the service that ordinarily conducts the recruitment exercise was sidelined and that when the decision was taken to conduct the exercise, he was not carried along.

Recruitment exercise

He said, “On the 9th of September, 2013, the Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prison Services Board placed advertisements in some national dailies for appointments into the Superintendent, Inspectorate and Immigration Assistant cadre signed by the then Board Secretary, Dr. Attahiru.

“I immediately placed a call to the Secretary that I am not aware that the Board met on this issue. I immediately placed a call to the Permanent Secretary too whether there was any decision of the Board to place an advert in the paper.

“I also placed a call to the two Commissioners that are seated before you here whether they were aware that the Board met and agreed for a publication to be made to recruit in the Service, but they all answered in the negative.

“I immediately wrote a letter to the then Secretary in which I expressed my dismay that as a stakeholder, as the head of a Service that is supposed to recruit, I was not aware of this exercise. He pleaded with me that I should understand with him that he was under immense pressure to put that advert up.

Abba Moro, Minister of Interior

“He said I should not write the letter but I said no, this is an official matter it is not an issue to do with Mr. David Parradang but with the Nigerian Immigration Service. So I wrote him a letter that I was not given any benefit of a reply till way back in October 2013 when he had been removed from the Ministry.

“Along the line we were asked to look for funding and I had to look for funding for this exercise from the office of the Director General of Budget. I wrote him a letter that we have waiver from the Federal Civil Service Commission to recruit 4,556 operatives of the Nigerian Immigration Service.

“He told me categorically that Government was very conscious of overheads and there would be no money made available for it. I thought he was just being reluctant. So I kept pressurising him every day for the whole of that week and subsequent weeks.

“The last concession I got from him is that I should wait that maybe it would be captured in the 2014 budget. So along the line, the Committee of the Board met, we discussed this issue of Drexel being the service provider and I said look, I am not in support of anybody collecting money for recruitment.

“I remember very clearly during that meeting where the CGs and the two Commissioners were in attendance, I told them that I read in the papers two days ago that in Niger State there was a recruitment like that and people were meant to pay and there was a lot of outcry in that state and the Governor had to step in and cancelled it.

“I told him that it is advisable for us to stagger the exercise and to go by states of origin. But when we appeared before this Committee of the Senate in one of the committee rooms here, we were all seated here and we got to know that we will be conducting recruitment exams on the 15th of March, 2013.

“That was the first day I heard that. I did not hear from any board; there was no board meeting to that effect. As a uniform organisation, you follow the last order. Initially when people asked me when is Immigration recruitment, I used to tell them that I don’t know but subsequently anybody that asked me I will reply that the Minister has declared categorically that we will recruit on the 15th of March and that is what we are going to stick to.

”Then I sent the DCG Human Resources to attend all subsequent meetings and when it came to the issue of funding he told me that they have made a budget of N212m to be used for that exercise. I asked him where the money was going to come from, you know that Immigration does not have such money.

“He said it is expected that the company should pay for it. I said okay, go and take representatives of the Service Provider to the Minister of Interior maybe he would have funding for the exercise. He told me there was none till about on 13th of March when N45million was made available for him to carry out that exercise.

“We were left with the option of having to mobilise all our officers in the State Commands to attend to the recruitment exercise. We sent bulk SMS to all of them saying look gentlemen this is the day we have to work with.

“All of them kept calling me to ask how they were going to get money to do this exercise? I told them if any money is given to me, I will make it available to you. No money was made available to the Nigerian Immigration Service and the exercise was supposed to be conducted.

“If you notice too there was no advertisement giving clear guidelines on how to go about it until the 14th of March that people were asked to go the various centres for the tests.”

Number of casualties

Giving the number of death that was recorded during the exercise, Parradang said, “I will like to state that on a state by state basis, the Nigeria Immigration Service is deeply pained of the events that led to loss of lives of 16 people.

“I want the figures to be corrected. We had seven people that died in the Federal Capital Territory. We had five that died in Rivers State. We had two that died in Niger State. We had one in Bauchi. We had one in Edo. Those are the exact figures.”

Why NIS did not stop the exercise

Parradang further explained that though the NIS was not carried along in the planning of the recruitment exercise, there was no way it would have stopped it because the service was not the driver of the recruitment.

  (0)

NIS recruitment: Abba Moro claims responsibility of applicants" death

Board disown Minister Moro over death of applicant

Interior Minister Abba Moro should carry the can for the death of 19 applicants at the Immigration Service recruitment centres last Saturday.

At the venue

This is the verdict of the Board of Immigration Service, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence, Prisons and Fire Service.

The minister sidelined the Board in the tragic recruitment, it was learnt yesterday.

Speaking before the Hon. Solomon Olamilekan- Adeola-headed House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts yesterday, a Commissioner on the Board, Mr. S D Tapgun, absolved the Board of any wrong-doing in the botched exercise.

Tapgun, who led the board members and heads of the agencies under the board to a session before the committee, said the Board did not approve the recruitment.

His words: “Only the Interior Minister and the consultant he engaged for the exercise can tell Nigerians exactly what happened. Even the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Immigration Service was not involved. He was not part of the recruitment at all. There was no board resolution to recruit anybody.

“When we, the members of the board, learnt about the recruitment, we wrote the Minister that we are not in support of engaging the services of a third party to conduct recruitment for the Immigration Service, but he ignored our letter and went ahead to engage the consultant named Rexel Technical Global Nigeria limited. The Consultant fixed everything, including a N1,000 fees, which they claimed was administrative charges.”

Tapgun said to prove the innocence of the board in the affair before Nigerians, members were ready to confront the Minister at any time.

According to the Commissioner, records at the board’s disposal show that 693,000 applicants who paid N1,000 each to designated banks by the consultant, were registered for the recruitment.

The Chairman of the Committee, Solomon Adeola said both the Interior Minister and the consultant should appear before the committee to explain where they derived the power for recruitment without approval from the Board.

They are also to reveal the total amount raked in from the applicants and the whereabout of the cash.

“This is fraud. Nigerians, our children have been defrauded to the tune of a billion naira. The Minister and the consultant must tell Nigerians how much was collected, the banks where the money is being kept and the account numbers, among others.”

The lawmaker said the committee had earlier summoned the Board before the tragic event after learning that applicants were being charged N1,000 each by the Nigeria Immigration Service for the recruitment.

The purpose at the time, Adeola said, was to enable the board account for the money so far collected. (0)

Board disown Minister Moro over death of applicant

Immigration exercise: Abba Moro blames doctors, nurses, bankers, teachers, others for stampede and death

Interior Minister, Abba Moro has blamed last Saturday’s stampede at the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment centres across the nation on doctors, nurses, bankers, teachers and others in paid employment.

Abba Moro, Minister of Interior

According to him, these already employed individuals thronged the various recruitment centres in their numbers.

No fewer than 19 applicants, including four expectant women, died in the stampede. Many others were injured.

Moro said though these categories of persons never applied for jobs with the NIS, they gate-crashed into the venues of the recruitment, with the hope of getting foreign postings and being pensionable if employed by the NIS.

Moro’s aide, Mallam Salisu Dantata Muhammed, who spoke on behalf of his boss in Abuja yesterday, said contrary to reports, the ministry put in place logistics to contain crowds at the centres.

He also blamed the social media for the stampede, saying that many of the applicants were inviting friends and relatives who did not apply for the job to the centres through Facebook, text messages and other portals.

Muhammed said: “It’s odd that many of those who turned up included employed bankers, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, teachers and others who wanted to cross over to the Immigration Services at all costs.

“The Minister and officials of his ministry considered last Saturday’s incident as very regrettable, more so as the unexpected huge crowd shattered the near perfect arrangements they had put in place against anticipated huge crowd.

“The Interior Ministry made adequate provisions for the expected mammoth crowd at the National Stadium meant to conveniently sit 75,000 people.

More than 45 percent of those who eventually turned up were not supposed to be at the centres.

“About 520,000 applied for the recruitment exercise across the federation. For instance, we had in our record that applicants totalling 68,000 were to be at the Abuja Stadium. But at the end, nearly 70 percent of non-applicants forced their way into the stadium.

“Apart from the committees that planned the exercise ahead, we had security personnel drawn from the Immigration, Civil Defence, Prisons, Fire Services and others to complement the Police. We made adequate preparations.

“But they overpowered the security personnel. Many of them got impatient and very desperate to get attention, and in the process, they began to climb and jump across impossible places in order to gain access to the stadium. That was the beginning of the stampede.

“The crowd got more desperate when they learnt that they could get foreign service postings and then become pensionable. So doctors, nurses, teachers, engineer, and all manners of people who had paid jobs turned up and increased our dilemma.”

The minister’s aide said the scathing criticisms that greeted the stampede were uncalled for, arguing that the critics did not bother to find out what caused the stampede.

According to him, the minister and top officials of the ministry have gone into special intercessory prayers, specifically for the applicants who died. (0)

Immigration exercise: Abba Moro blames doctors, nurses, bankers, teachers, others for stampede and death

Immigration tragedy and Jonathan’s side

The Honourable Minister of Interior, comrade Patrick Abba Moro, and the Nigeria Immigration Service are in the news again – still on the very bad side as almost always. Not too long ago, it was the same Nigeria Immigration Service then under the leadership of Mrs. Rose Chinyere Uzoma that allegedly recruited over four thousand officers into the Service which we (Nigerians) were later told did not go down well with the Honourable Minister, comrade Abbah Moro, and members of the Board of Nigeria Immigration, Fire Service, Civil Defence and Prison Service, reportedly because of the failure of Mrs. Uzoma to abide by the due process guiding such an exercise. As was the question then which still desires to be addressed, if the Honourable Minister, who at the time was reported to be ignorant of the happenings pertaining to his ministry vis-a-vis the recruitment racketeering that rocked the Nigeria Immigration Service under the control of Mrs. Rose Uzoma, was a member of the foregoing board or ably represented at the time by a proxy, then how on earth would comrade Abbah Moro ever exonerate himself from the subsisting public impression that he was the leader of the people who masterminded the recruitment scam under Mrs. Uzoma? And like I did submit at the time that “comrade Abba Moro could hardly be isolated from the scam since it allegedly took place under the ministry he oversees and as such has lost or rather lacked the necessary moral ground to be the one to set up a panel to investigate Mrs. Uzoma” (see Daily Independent of January 24, 2013 under the rubric: Issues in the Immigration investigation Panel).

However, if the ugly incident of the last few days (March 15, 2014, to be precise) arising from the tragedy called the Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment test which saw the death of no less than fifteen persons, including pregnant mothers, amounts to anything serious in the estimation of the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, then one is inclined to think that comrade Abba Moro has no more business presiding over the affairs of the Ministry of Interior. To begin with, how do we rationalize a situation whereby the Nigeria Immigration Service under his watchful eyes decided to go the whole hog of “extorting” the sum of one thousand naira each from millions of unemployed Nigerian youths all in the name of giving them hope of being considered qualified to participate in the recruitment test that unfortunately ended up consuming the precious lives of scores of them? Of course, hearing it from the Honourable minister that no less than four thousand, five hundred and fifty six thousand vacancies were apparently what Jonathan-led government has approved for recruitment into the Nigeria Immigration Service, one wonders with hindsight why Mr. Abba Moro and his board members – saddled with the recruitment responsibility – went as far as allowing the sale of millions of recruitment forms to job seekers for more than three weeks. It is though understandable that these job applicants were not forced to purchase these recruitment forms, the truth of the matter is that the Honourable Minister under whose jurisdiction and/or supervision this glaring case of extortion took place can hardly be free from complicity in the loss of lives of our fellow compatriots struggling to become useful and responsible by attending this ill-fated Immigration recruitment exercise.

Bad enough, as if the demise of these promising young Nigerians was of no consequence or something worth trifling with, the Honourable Minister while being interviewed on the Nigeria Television Authority did make a statement to the effect that some of those who died before the exercise were squarely responsible for their deaths. Little wonder that this seemingly careless remark provoked different headlines in the national dailies. And as one daily aptly captured and captioned it, “You killed yourselves – Honourable Minister of interior”. Agreed that one way or the other, some of these victims of immigration recruitment exercise may have through their actions and/or inactions contributed to the fate they suffered, but do we really need/expect a responsible minister of Federal Republic of Nigeria to callously blurt out such gaffe all in an attempt to blame these hapless Nigerians, even at the expense of considering the farcical arrangement put in place for the recruitment test? Now come to think of it, considering the nature of seats and the seating arrangement that characterized the venue, is the national stadium a conducive/befitting place meant for such exercise?  If indeed the Honourable minister of Interior and members of the Board of Nigeria Immigration, fire Service, Civil Defence and Prison Service did not in their inner most hearts consider the recruitment exercise a mere formality orchestrated to be used as a ploy to justify the (mis)appropriation of the huge proceeds accruable from the sale of millions of Immigration recruitment forms, why then did they not deem it necessary and convenient for the applicants to stagger the recruitment test, at least bearing in mind the fact of different categories of job applicants alongside their qualifications? Or, better still, why must all categories be subjected to the test on the same day and at the same time and venue?

Incidentally, it is one speculation still making rounds that the consulting firm that handled the entire exercise has the wives of comrade Abba Moro and that of the Senate President, His Excellency, distinguished Senator David Mark as the key vested interest. But whether this is true or false, it remains quite unfair going by media reports that the Nigeria Immigration Service was not adequately carried along in an exercise that originally belongs to it. Even though comrade Abbah Moro has quickly denied these allegations, particularly the one bordering on the outsourcing of the entire exercise to a consultancy firm allegedly belonging to Senator David Mark’s wife, it is high time Nigerians be told the naked truth as to the real names of the owners of this malfunctioning firm whose farcical arrangement occasioned the untimely and avoidable deaths of scores of job seeking Nigerians. This matter is such that we must not trifle with it and neither does it make sense for us to still pretend that all is well. This is the time to call a spade a spade.

In the circumstance, however, it is instructive to state the obvious.  The Honourable minister of Interior, comrade Abbah Moro, just like in the previous case of Mrs. Rose Chinyere Ozoma, stands unqualified to be the person to institute a panel of inquiry into the circumstances of the travails of these young Nigerians who sustained various degrees of injuries as well as those who died while striving to participate in the recruitment exercise. For one thing, comrade Abba Moro could not have concluded based on whatever preliminary reports hastily made available to him by whoever that claimed that the victims of this recruitment tragedy were responsible for their ordeal due mainly to what Moro branded “lack of patience” on their part. Yet here he goes again, this same man is now tinkering with the idea of constituting the so-called high powered panel to investigate and unravel what he has already told us was the primary cause of the alleged stampede that precipitated the regrettable deaths of these hapless job seekers.

But lest forget, leaving/entrusting the Honourable minister of Interior with such task to set up a panel to dispassionately look into the remote and immediate causes of the misfortune that befell job applicants at the various centers of the Immigration recruitment test is clearly tantamount to putting the would-be members of the intended panel under brief to re-echo what we have already heard from comrade Patrick Abba Moro. This is why it has become imperative for President Goodluck Jonathan to swiftly step in and do the needful by instituting a presidential panel that would rather carry out a thorough and objective inquiry in this regard, with a view to redeeming the increasingly dwindling fortune and image of his government. A stitch in time saves nine.

 

 

Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal (08037738607),  

  (0)

Immigration tragedy and Jonathan’s side

Minister Moro faces sack over death of 19 job seekers

Interior Minister Abba Moro’s job was hanging in the balance yesterday after a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan.

Abba Moro, Minister of Interior

Besides, there were protests in Abuja and Kaduna over the death last weekend of no fewer than 19 job seekers at Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment centres.

Jonathan summoned Moro and NIS Comptroller General Mr David Parradang to the Villa to explain what went wrong.

The presidential action followed the national outcry that greeted the deaths in Abuja, Minna, Port Harcourt and Benin centres of 19 applicants, including expectant women.

Eminent Nigerians have called for Moro’s resignation or his sack by the President over the poor handling of what should be a routine event.

Moro insisted yesterday that he would not resign. He blamed the victims for the stampede that led to their deaths, saying they failed to obey instructions. The minister added that some unauthorised people came to the centres to cause problems. He promised to set up a probe.

The organisation of the recruitment has been generally adjudged to be shoddy, with 520,000 job seekers chasing 4, 556 openings. There was stampede at the stadia used for the recruitment.

In Kaduna, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) led a protest to the NIS.

In Abuja, a civil society organisation spearheaded a march on the office of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

The NLC, in a statement by its President AbdulWaheed Omar, called for a probe of the deaths.

Moro and Parradang were at the Presidential Villa for over two hours. They were led to the President’s office by the Chief of Staff, Gen. Jones Arogbofa.

Jonathan described the “incident” as sad.

Speaking at the inauguration of the National Conference in Abuja, he said: “As we were preparing for this inauguration, a very sad incident happened on Saturday.”

He called for a minute silence “for the young lads who died on Saturday”.

It was learnt that Jonathan tongue lashed the two officials for about 20 minutes. They were reportedly dumbfounded throughout the session.

They could not give cogent reasons for the deaths.

The President was reported to have told them: “I am highly disappointed with your performance. I cannot tolerate this.”

It was learnt that the President’s mood suggested that the time was up for the two officials to resign – if they could read his countenance.

A highly-placed source said: “We have never seen the President in such a foul mood at the Villa. The case was compounded by the fact that the Minister and the Immigration chief could not give cogent reasons.

“They were just blabbing.

“At the end of the 20-minute session, the Minister and Parradang wobbled out of the President’s office, uncertain of their jobs.”

Another source in the Presidency said: “The President’s reaction suggested that they cannot go scot free at all. If they do not quit, he might show them the way out of government.

“What the President did was to tongue lash them, leave them to ponder and take the path of honour by quitting; otherwise they will be removed without dignity.”

It was gathered that Moro and Parradang were still trying to lobby some governors and highly-placed Nigerians to keep their jobs

Security agencies have started probing the involvement of a company, Drexel Nig. limited, in the recruitment tragedy.

A top official of one of the security agencies said: “From our preliminary findings, over N7billion was collected from 734,000 candidates who applied for about 4,556 vacancies.

“We are investigating how the company was engaged, the terms and the service rendered to the NIS.”

The peaceful protest at the Kaduna State command of the NIS was led by NLC Vice-President Isa Aremu. The protesters arrived at the NIS office early in the morning and blocked its entrance. They prevented the staff from entering their offices.

The union members carried placards that contained various inscriptions and a letter of protest which they wanted to deliver to the state controller.

However, the officers on duty barred the workers from the premises, telling them that the controller was not in the office.

Aremu demanded compensation for the families of the 19 victims.

He urged Jonathan to demonstrate that no life of an applicant would further be wasted at any recruitment centre.

He said: “The President should take action so as to prevent shameless exhibition of incompetence and non-service delivery by some of his ministers.”

The Citizens Advocacy for Social and Economic Rights (CASER), led the Abuja protest.

The Executive Director of CASER, Mr Frank Tietie, led some members to the NHRC headquarters.

Tietie urged the authorities to probe the incident and bring those found wanting to book.

He said lack of crowd control measures and medical emergency personnel at the centres across the country was a violation of the applicants’ rights to life and dignity.

Tietie said preventable deaths, occasioned by negligence and inaction, were rife in the country.

He called for urgent action to prevent a recurrence.

The CASER executive director submitted a petition addressed to the UN Human Rights Commission to the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Prof. Ben Angwe, for onward transmission.

Angwe described the incident as “sad, not only to the commission but also the Federal Government and country at large”.

The commission is investigating into incident.

Angwe expressed regret that the exercise, which was meant to provide jobs for Nigerians and reduce unemployment, resulted in avoidable deaths.

He said that the incident had kick-started a new beginning in the campaign for the protection of the fundamental human rights of Nigerians.

He assured the group of NHRC’s commitment to assisting in identifying the victims and ensuring they were compensated by the government.

The NHRC executive secretary praised CASER for its action, saying it indicated that groups were heeding the commission’s call for sensitisation of Nigerians to their human rights.

The NLC said the congress was saddened and shocked to learn of the avoidable deaths.

Said Omar: “It is grossly unfair for the Immigration Service to have invited thousands of our youths to physically present themselves to compete to fill a miserly 4000 vacancies.

“Nothing but crass opportunism can explain this heartless scam.

“A more rational and discerning recruitment process could easily have reduced the number by insisting on raising minimum standards.

“The explanation by the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, that 520,000 applicants were invited for 4,556 spaces and that the applicants died in a stampede due to impatient and non-adherence to laid down orderly procedure, is rather weak and untenable.’’

Omar noted that to have invited so many applicants for such few spaces was unacceptable.

He called on the Federal Government to investigate the NIS, query the methods it adopted and the discretion it exercised in conducting the programme.

“It is also important to remind government of the danger that unemployment, particularly unemployment of qualified youths, represents.

“We, therefore, call on the government to tackle unemployment with increased commitment, and appropriately sanction those who have had a hand in causing these scandalous deaths.”

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) described the stampede as a national disaster. It called for an investigation. (0)

Minister Moro faces sack over death of 19 job seekers