Government officials scrambling to explain the inexplicable have offered all sorts of excuses for the avoidable deaths of 19 young, job-seeking Nigerians. But the only explanation that makes sense is that when a similar tragedy happened six years ago, those who presided over it got away scot free.
Back in July 2008, a recruitment exercise conducted by the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) and Nigerian Prison Service (NPS) produced a grim toll of 17 dead across the country.
That is why I totally agree with President Goodluck Jonathan who has reportedly told his cabinet that the next time this sort of debacle occured, the minister responsible would be tried for culpable homicide.
Our prayer is that we never experience the likes of last weekend’s horror show. But if history repeats itself and someone actually faces justice for it, I would be one of those cheering the government of the day to the rafters.
However, the tough talk was about the only thing of worth to come out of official quarters all week over the matter. The rest was just sentimental slop and annoying phrases like “the deaths were unfortunate.” It makes you wish officials would clam up when they don’t have anything to say.
Take the case of the sorry Minister of Interior, Abba Moro. Salt has been rubbed into compounded injury by his continued stay in the cabinet. Decency would have required he stepped aside without being pushed. President Jonathan who could have put him out of his misery would leave him to twist in the wind a little bit longer in order not to seem to be caving in to pressure from critics.
While he goes through the motions of presidential posturing, it is our lot to suffer Moro who, as he fights to stave off the inevitable, appears to have come down with a bad case of foot-in-the-mouth disease.
Trying to come across as empathetic after his initial stumbles, the minister referenced his past as a labour activist and said he understood what it meant to be unemployed. Thank God he’s been a unionist; but he’s never been dead. So he cannot appreciate what the victims or their families feel.
Rather than accept that the buck stopped at his desk, he’s been looking everywhere for someone to pass it to. He blamed the social media. He accused doctors, bankers, teachers and other gainfully employed people who he said swarmed NIS recruitment centers looking to be hired and triggering stampedes. Why would they do that when they already had jobs?
According the minister’s aide, a certain Mallam Salisu Dantata Muhammed, it was all about greener pastures. “The crowd got more desperate when they learnt that they could get Foreign Service postings and then become pensionable. So doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, and all manner of people who had paid jobs turned up and increased our dilemma.”
Let’s assume for a moment that there’s something to Moro’s theory. What does the picture he has painted say about Nigeria of 2015? What does it say about the competence of the administration in which he serves? He speaks of a country from which thousands of doctors, bankers, nurses, teachers and others are looking desperately to flee courtesy of Foreign Service posting.
Aside the prospect of deliverance through foreign posting, we are to believe that thousands also stormed the stadia in different cities just imagining the glorious pension benefits the NIS offers!
There’s no other way to spin it. What happened last Saturday was a catastrophic public relations outing for the government of the day. It captures the inability to provide jobs in graphic and unflattering terms. It illustrates the people’s desperate economic plight in terms that not even the harshest opposition critic could have done.
Aware of the gravity of what just took place, the president has moved into damage-control mode. He rolled out palliatives to soothe the grief and rage of bereaved families. For those who died, their families would be given three employment slots. Those who were wounded were given one slot each.
I dare say that a job with the NIS is poor exchange for a life. Luckily for the living, some would soon become families chock full of Immigration officers!
For the merely injured who did not pay the supreme sacrifice to ensure their families would be employed by the Federal Government for generations, there is still much to celebrate. Even if you are a dullard and probably got yourself wounded by making a dumb move last weekend, a few bruises here and there have yielded spectacular dividends.
This brings us to the hundreds of thousands who went home in one piece. Imagine how they rejoiced seven days ago that they did not return home in body bags or in air-conditioned Ministry of Interior ambulances. Now, seeing what luck has befallen the departed many, surely, would be wishing they were dead, or at least, injured! Now they are left high and dry. If only someone had been visionary enough to engage in some self-inflicted injury! Well…
People would argue that the government had to respond in some way. I agree. The point of cavil is that whatever was to be done should have thought through, and not be some cynical, self-serving, sentimental, knee-jerk sop.
This is because parallels would be drawn. What, for instance, makes the victims of the Immigration recruitment tragedy more deserving of compensation than the faceless, nameless thousands who have fallen to the brutality of Boko Haram?
Many have campaigned for some sort of compensation for them. But government has stated over and again that it would do nothing of the sort. So what logic now makes compensation right for one set of victims and wrong for the other?
Don’t look too far for answers: it’s all down to political expediency. Given the vociferous outcry over what happened last Saturday any politician’s prospects could be damaged – even in a crude, desensitised environment such as ours.
Desperate situations, to succumb to an equally desperate cliché, call for desperate actions – even if that means being accused of hypocrisy and double standards from now until February 2015!
