Tag: Moro

Nigeria’s govt gives death for jobs

Ours must indeed be a country of taught nothing, learnt nothing people. Otherwise, we would not have lost the 19 youths, including pregnant women and their unborn babies that died in their desperate search for jobs on March 15. It is bewildering that a recruitment exercise would turn to such a blood-sucking demon that would consume three pregnant women in Benin, eight applicants made up of six women and two men in Abuja, three in Minna and five in Port Harcourt. We would see that we were taught nothing and so learnt nothing when we realise that no fewer than 20 people died in various states of the federation during a similar exercise conducted by the same Ministry of Interior, for Nigeria Prisons Service, Nigeria Immigration Service and Customs Service, in 2008.

In the 2014 episode, some of the applicants were flogged by security men brought in to control the crowd that turned up for the exercise. So, what is the difference between people looking for what to eat in the country and those who, out of desperation, get killed in their bid to get to some foreign countries where they believe their lives could be bettered? The NIS tragedy merely tells us how much we value lives in Nigeria. Indeed, if what happened here had happened in some other countries where the level of social consciousness is high, the story would have been different. By now, interior minister Abba Moro would have become a former minister because even the government would be struggling to extricate itself from the mess. So, there won’t be any question of the minister having the audacity to say he won’t resign. If he failed to do the needful, the government would have done something about him so that something would not do the government itself.

But Nigeria’s leaders are so contemptuous of the people because they know Nigerians, as the happiest people on earth that they are said to be, will tolerate anything. That is why state governments would have the temerity to suggest that fuel subsidy should be removed without fearing any backlash. And that is why the Federal Government itself would accept the suggestion hook, line and sinker, because it agrees with its own plan for the people.

Now, less than a week after the incident, President Goodluck Jonathan jetted out of the country to Namibia. Many of us would be wondering why this should be so. Well, may be the president has seen the frequency of these sad occurrences and has made up his mind not to be distracted by them because, at the rate at which people are dying needlessly in the country, the president would do nothing if he decides that flags must fly at half mast with every occurrence. Anyway, he did not travel out without leaving comforting words for the victims’ families as well as the injured. While three family members of the former were offered three job slots, the latter would get automatic employment. But it is only a matter of time , there would soon be infighting among some of the relations; whether the beneficiary should be the wife, husband or the younger or older ones of the deceased, etc. Unemployment is such a serious issue in the country that there would be a series of family meetings to resolve who should take the benefit of the deceased in some cases, with people who were sworn enemies of the dead now coming forward as the closest to them in their lifetime. The government’s gesture is tokenism, at best. But, because our leaders have always known us to be minimalists, they throw such things at us and we also accept so appreciatively. I won’t be surprised if people from the towns and states where the beneficiaries come from start praising the government for its kind gesture, perhaps taking advert space in the media to express their profound gratitude.

Yet, everything about the tragedy encapsulates the Nigerian situation. It captures the way we are; from corruption in government to its ineptitude, and then to the people’s legendary docility. Why would 520,000 job seekers be running after 4,556 openings? The answer is simple: because government has not done the necessary things to expand the economy. Even Minister Moro’s statement on Wednesday that more people than expected came for the NIS interview because they learnt they could be posted out to other countries and be pensionable, leading inexorably to the uncontrollability of the crowd was still an indictment of the government. Why are Nigerians always anxious to leave the country at the slightest opportunity, after all, it has not always been like that? It is because the government has refused to make not just the business environment, but also the general environment, conducive. It is so harsh in here; you don’t have light; you don’t have water; the roads are bad; there are no jobs. In fact, nothing works here; and astonishingly so in a country where people still scramble for power despite the fact that we regard many people in government as thieves. Even the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was employed to redirect the economy appears so clueless as to the way out of our quagmire that she submitted that we must be under some resource curse.

May be the minister is right, otherwise, why would government become Agbalowomeri (someone who takes from the have-nots)? How on earth can government ask people looking for jobs to pay to get jobs? It is the same syndrome that is driving the so-called removal of fuel subsidy. Government has become a gaming machine and no amount of money is enough to satisfy it.

Now, instead of the minister accepting responsibility and throwing in the towel, he has been blaming everyone else but himself for the calamity. He blamed the police, the doctors, teachers, bankers, etc. for the stampede that led to the applicants’ deaths, in spite of the fact that the Board of Immigration Service, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence, Prisons and Fire Service claimed that he sidelined it in the tragic exercise. So, it was his sole show. Therefore, he should carry the can now that things have gone awry. And that, it seems, is what he dislikes.

Perhaps the sad aspect of it all is that it is not unlikely that NIS had already known those it would employ; yet, it wanted to give the impression that the recruitment was transparent. If that is the case, it is almost certain that those to be taken would not have been in any of the centres as their letters of employment would be taken to them at home, courtesy of their parents who know somebody who is somebody that also knows somebody either in the bedroom of power or at its corridors. So, we might just have wasted those youths who died in the false hope that they were going for a transparent recruitment exercise.

As usual, there would be probes into the disaster; but we need not live by probes that bear no fruit alone. Let those with the locus standi take the matter to court. They should sue the hell out of the government. If anything, government itself would know that important appointments should go to people who are capable only and not just as job for the boys. We cannot just bemoan our plight each time we suffer this kind of fate. The best way to make people learn is by making them pay for their negligence or incompetence, especially when it involves loss of lives. We must grow; and we cannot grow when people lose their loved ones in these avoidable circumstances and they are only left to mourn and grief alone or get rewarded with tokenism. Yes, the dead cannot be brought back to life; but the lesson would have been taught and learnt that people must be up and doing in their respective official capacities.

We also need to know into which account the about N520million that was collected from the applicants was paid. I hope you are not beginning to have my kind of fears as to why the government is yet undecided on sacking the minister? As I have always said, ‘to a carpenter, every tool looks like a nail’; in the same vein, to most of our politicians these days, every money looks like campaign fund.