Rep. Jaha said recruitment waivers result in lop-sided recruitment, which is contributory to the upsurge of insurgency in the northeast zone.
The House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee investigating recruitment racketeering in Federal Government agencies and parastatals will recommend the abolition of waivers to bypass advertisement of job opportunities.
The Ad hoc Committee Chairman, Rep. Yusuf Gagdi, stated this position at the resumption of the investigative hearing on Monday.
Gagdi, who also accused the Registrar of the National Postgraduate Medical College, Prof Fatiu Arogundade, of lop-sided recruitments based on the agency’s presentation at the hearing, worried that almost all the government agencies that had so far appeared before the committee applied for waivers, and were recruiting secretly to avoid job advertisement.
He said, “We will abolish recruitment waivers for advertisements. We will abolish the use of waivers because waiver is not for the good of this country. It is an abuse of the citizens of Nigeria. When they give you waivers, you share the slots among Directors in the agencies and the political masters that superintend over those agencies. Whether it is the National Assembly I don’t care. But whenever recruitment waiver is given, you do not advertise and give opportunity to citizens of this country to have access to recruitment.”
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A member of the Committee, Rep. Ahmadu Jaha, pointed out that nobody from the entire northeast region was captured in the recruitment carried out by the agency.
This, he said, contributes to the upsurge of insurgency in the zone as opportunities that should be made public for all to apply for are hidden from the people.
“We are all aware of what happened as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency and I don’t want to believe nobody applied in the whole of the northeast if advertisements were properly done. In my local government alone, Gwoza, we have more than 100 medical doctors, more than 50 consultants, and more than 20 professors in medicine.
“There is no way you can look at us as if we do not know what we are doing saying that nobody applied. Let me tell you one thing. If they are searching for sponsors of Boko Haram, if they are searching for the main causes of Boko Haram, your organization is one of them. This is because one of the main reasons why people join Boko Haram is because they are being short-changed.
“One of the reasons people join Boko Haram is because they do not have anything doing for a living. Somebody cannot go to school and spend years and go to Ibadan and write examinations and become a consultant and now you say you advertise a position and he is there doing nothing for a living and he did not apply?
“How do you expect peace in the country if in the whole region, six states, there is no single employee of your organisation. This is to tell you that if we can pursue all the more than 700 or 1000 MDAs in the country, we may hardly have less than five percent from the northeast and you expect to have peace.
“We are not happy. We are saying this before the camera and we expect everybody to know. We would be citing this agency as an example of sponsors or causes of Boko Haram up till eternity,” the lawmaker stated.
