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Lawmakers and recruitment scams in MDAs

JANUARY 22, 2013 

David Mark

JOSIAH OLUWOLE examines a recent debate in the Senate on the employment scandals in government agencies and notes that the lawmakers may be culpable in the matter.

The story told on the floor of the Senate last Wednesday by Senator Ali Ndume raised the question of credibility of the investigation by lawmakers into the recruitment scandals in some ministries, departments and agencies. There is every reason to believe  the revelations from the Nigeria Immigration Service, and which reverberated across high-level quarters, including the Presidency, gaining prominence only because of the calibre of people adversely affected in the last recruitment exercise into the service.

Ndume and his colleagues in the Senate used the opportunity offered by the consideration of a motion on the employment irregularities in the Nigerian Immigration Service and other MDAs sponsored by Abubakar Bagudu, to relive their sordid experiences. It was a tale of a systemic failure from which public officers in the country would find it hard to exonerate themselves.

Therefore, National Assembly’s  move to begin an investigation into how MDAs have engaged thousands of jobless Nigerians in shameful employment rackets is something that should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Attempting to paint a gory picture of the evil practice, Ndume gave a narrative of how he was made to part with N200,000 in an attempt to secure a job for one of his constituents. He said the individual was a graduate of Geography, who had been in the labour market for four years, but had resorted to taxi driving following the failure to secure a paid employment.

According to him, this young graduate had approached him with a request of N200,000 to meet the demand of officials of a certain federal agency that was conducting recruitment. He said he acquiesced in the young man’s request only for him to return that the amount for the job had been increased to N400,000.

The graduate, Ndume said, returned the money, when he could not raise the balance of N200,000, resigning himself to his new occupation of driving a taxi in the city of Abuja.

In December last year, when the budget of an MDA was being considered, Senator Bukar Abba Ibrahim, raised an embarrassing issue. He had accused the agency of failing to honour the list of candidates for employment which he had sent to it. According to him, the agency only managed to employ one of his daughters, who subsequently abandoned the job for undisclosed reasons.

Senator Ibrahim’s narration underscores the lawmakers’ persistent overtures to the MDAs regarding employment. Some chairmen of committees have a long list of unemployed persons and their curriculum vitae from their constituencies, which they make available to the agencies over which they have oversight for possible employment opportunities. Even lawmakers who do not head any committee also use their membership of their committees to seek  advantage from the agencies  they supervise to get jobs for their relatives, friends and members of their constituencies.

Another practice which came before the Senate on Wednesday was the issuance of letters by senators and members of the House of Representatives to job seekers introducing them to the agencies for employment.

The practice of securing a letter of introduction from lawmakers to agencies of government for employment dates back to the restart of democracy and the reopening of the National Assembly in 1999. This practice is founded on corruption, as agencies honouring such letters often use same to get favour from the lawmakers when  it is time to get their budgets passed or run into problems during oversight visits.

Currently, the volume of letters leaving the National Assembly to MDAs for either employments or contracts is unprecedented. The bulk of visitors to the National Assembly are simply seeking opportunity of seeing a senator or a House member to get a letter of introduction to accomplish certain purposes.

President of the Senate, David Mark, alluded to this fact when he said he often did not give out letters. According to him, those who have approached him for letters often come back to say that the officials of the agency where he or she had gone to look for job would require that he make phone calls to them to confirm the letter and when he demanded for the name of such official, it would not be given as they would fear that the job might eventually not get to them for revealing the names of those making the request.

Mark noted that the committees saddled with the responsibility of investigating the matter might have problems when the agencies who have been accused of illegal recruitment would come before it and present letters of introduction issued by senators and would claim that lawmakers urged them to breach the rules.

Recruitment racketeering as captured by lawmakers during the motion is only stating what has been known by most Nigerians a long time ago. Bagudu’s motion noted that reports from the Immigration Service showed that over 4000 employment slots were approved by the Federal Government but were sold to job applicants and some allocated to other personalities, just as due process such as advertisement for interested members of the public to apply was not observed.

According to Bagudu, employment letters were also allegedly offered for sale between N400,000 and N500,000 by the  syndicate whose operation base are in Gwagwalada, Karu and other places.

The issue of having recruitment tilted in favour of the state or ethnic group of the chief executives of the MDAs was also highlighted, even as it was considered to have breached the federal character principle as enshrined in the Constitution.

Leader of the Senate, Victor Ndoma-Egba, while reliving his own experiences, said that the issue of bribe for employment in the agencies was not a matter of hearsay, but a reality. He also told the story of how a constituent of his came to him to demand for N500,000 in order to secure employment in an agency of government.

“I am the Senate Leader, you can imagine what happens to other people who may not be as privileged. It means only the rich will now be employed. This will encourage dynastic poverty, that means father who is poor would have their children poor, and their grandchildren in poverty, It is not only happening in Immigrations. It is happening everywhere. The committees should investigate the recent recruitment exercises in all the ministries and agencies.”

The Senate Leader is not alone in this frustration. Senator Ayogu Eze submitted that “the situation was a late symptom of a state that is failing.” He however quickly added that the dearth of employment opportunities gave rise to the kind of transactions surrounding recruitments in the agencies. He believes that if the private sector redoubles its efforts at creating jobs, the situation could be reduced.

Another senator, Senator Chris Anyanwu, heaped the blame on public office holders, who have abandoned nationalism and settled for tribalism and sectionalism. “We have all returned to our villages and this is forcing on Nigeria a system of mediocrity,” she said.

The Federal Character Commission is saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that the MDAs comply with the principles as enshrined in the Constitution. But according to Senator Smart Adeyemi, who was a former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Intergovernmental Affairs, the commission was a toothless bulldog. He said, “Federal Character Commission cannot bark and bite. It does not have the power to stop this corruption. What we need is an agency that can bark and bite. We have to ensure that the law is  able to punish those who break the law.”

A curious drama took  place when senators had problems agreeing on which committees should be chosen to handle the matter. While some suggested the inclusion of the Committees on Interior and Establishment, Mark was not disposed to selecting the committees.

The Senate Committees on Federal Character and Intergovernmental Affairs and Labour and Productivity were eventually mandated to investigate the matter across all the MDAs, starting with a time frame of eight weeks. But those who must come to equity must do so with clean hands. Will the Senate be able to deal with this systemic problem without first admitting its own wrongs? Will the MDAs  not  accuse the legislature  of complicity in the problem? Unless the upper house first puts these issues in perspective, it might end up like other probes where the hunter became the hunted.