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With the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment fiasco, government is planning to ban pre-recruitment payments for federal jobs, a move that is bound to end the illegal revenue drive of many recruitment cartels that dote several government establishments.
In the failed exercise, the NIS electronic recruitment (e-recruitment) system was used. The procedure requires a candidate to purchase a scratch card costing N1, 000, considered both outrageous and an extortion of job applicants.
A consultancy outfit, Drexel Limited was recruited to oversee the procedures. About 710,000 people applied; 16 died during the exercise while over N710 million was generated though only about N45 million has been declared by Drexel, senior immigration officials conversant with the case ventured at the weekend in Abuja.
“In a much more transparent process where the motive is not greed via extortion, technology could have been used effectively to narrow the list down to a manageable number,” said Mr. Ojoade Joseph, an e-Recruitment expert to IT Edge News in Lagos.
An angry presidency had cancelled what it regarded as a sham recruitment process and demanded explanation from top officials who managed the scheme including the Minister of Interior Affairs, Patrick Abba Moro, and Comptroller General of Immigration, David Parradang. Public outcry favours the sack of the two officials.
Virtually all governments Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) including tax funded security agencies own and manage e-Recruitment portals requiring job seekers to buy scratch cards to access the sites.
“An ideal recruitment process in its own right but like everything else in this country, it has been abused and turned into a money spinning exercise for corrupt public officials. It is a matter of time before the private sector set up such schemes to scam millions of people,” said an angry public commentator and Lagos based legal psycho-analyst, Mrs. Ngozi Udofia.
