He told the
Senate that as the Minister of Interior under whose purview this unfortunate
exercise took place, he cannot abdicate his responsibility and as such, he
accepted that the buck stops at his table.
“We are deeply
grieved and saddened about the way events turned out. We express our sincere
regrets once again. However, permit me to state that our patriotic desire was
the pursuit of a more honest, transparent, cost effective, a more efficient and
equitable platform.
“We sincerely
made appropriate and adequate preparations for a hitch -free exercise, but as
most things in administrative and human conditions, the yield curve of expected
outcome is mostly undefined.
“My heart goes out
to the families of those who have lost their dear loved ones. I sincerely
sympathise with those injured. I share in their grief. I share in their pains.
sThe loss of these young Nigerians, who are needed as a critical human resource
factor for nation building is most regrettable,” he said.
Moro however
dismissed as untrue, allegation that he took unilateral decision in awarding
the contract to a consultancy firm, pointing out that most members of the NIS
board were at the meeting where the decision to award the recruitment contract
was taken.
But the
Comptroller General of the NIS, David Paradang, told the Senate Committee on
Interior carrying out the open investigation that he was never aware of the
decision to carry out the recruitment exercise, pointing out that no board
meeting was held to take that decision.
Insisting that
due processes were adhered to in the recruitment exercise, Moro said: “In the
36th meeting of the Board held on May 23, 2013, the award of the e-Recruitment
contract and its terms were conveyed to the Board which noted and approved the
non-involvement of the Ministry, the Board and the Nigerian Immigration Service
in the collection of Technology/application processing fees”.
Paradang told the
Committee that as the Comptroller General of NIS, “I am not aware of any
decision taken by the board to appoint any consultant for the purpose of
recruitment but I obeyed the last order when I was told that the Minister had
taken decision”.
He said he
made series of efforts to get the budget office approve some funds for the
recruitment but failed because the budget office insisted that funds for such
recruitment could only be accommodated in the 2014 budget.
“I made such
effort because I was never in support of imposing any fee on applicants,” he
said.
Parradang consistently insisted that the NIS was never
the “driver” of the recruitment, but it simply complied with the Ministry of
Interior’s directives.
But Interior Minister Abba Moro
said the Board knew about the tragic exercise.
The Comptroller-General noted
that throughout his years in the Service, nobody had ever taken away the power
of the NIS to recruit operatives of the Service from levels 1-7.
He also told the committee that
he was opposed to the collection of money from applicants, adding that he
advised that the exercise be staggered and state of origin be adopted.
No fewer than 16 applicants died
during the recruitment test for which each applicant paid N1,000.
Parradang stated in his words
that on September 9, last year, Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prison
Services Board placed advertisements in some national dailies for appointments
into the Superintendent, Inspectorate and Immigration Assistant cadres.
He noted that the advertisement
was signed by the then Board Secretary, Dr. Attahiru.
“I immediately placed a call to
the secretary that I am not aware that the board met on this issue. I also
placed a call to the permanent secretary too whether there was any decision of
the Board to place an advert in the paper.
“I also placed a call to the two
commissioners that are seated before you here whether they were aware that the
Board met and agreed for a publication to be made to recruit in the Service,
but they all answered in the negative,” Parradang told the lawmakers.
The Immigration boss said that he
wrote the then secretary to express “my dismay that as a stakeholder, as the
head of a Service that is supposed to recruit, I was not aware of this
exercise.”
Parradang said that the secretary
pleaded that “I should understand with him that he was under immense pressure
to put up the advert”.
Parradang quoted Attahiru to have
said “I should not write the letter, but I said no, this is an official matter;
it is not an issue to do with Mr. David Parradang but with the Nigeria
Immigration Service.”
He added: “So I wrote him a
letter that I was not given any benefit of a reply till way back in October when
he had been removed from the ministry. Along the line, we were asked to look
for funding and I had to look for funding for this exercise from the office of
the Director General of Budget.
“I wrote him a letter that we
have waiver from the Federal Civil Service Commission to recruit 4,556
operatives of the Nigeria Immigration Service.
“He told me categorically that
government was very conscious of overheads and there would be no money made
available for it. I thought he was just being reluctant.
“So, I kept pressurising him. I
went to that office practically every day for the whole of that week and
subsequent weeks.
“The last concession I got from
him is that I should wait, that maybe it would be captured in the 2014 budget.
“So, along the line, the
Committee of the Board met; we discussed this issue of Drexel (consultant)
being the service provider and I said ‘look, I am not in support of anybody
collecting money for recruitment’.
“I remember very clearly during
that meeting where the two commissioners were. I told them that I read in the
papers that in Niger State there was recruitment and people were meant to pay
and there was a lot of outcry in that state and the governor had to step in and
cancelled it.
“I said, ‘look we may go this
line gentlemen if we don’t take time’. But we kept going and we had no other
board meeting, to my knowledge, till when the secretary called us to the
Steering Committee Meeting in January.
“I told them that it is advisable
for us to stagger the exercise and to go by states of origin. But when we
appeared before this Committee of the Senate in one of the committee rooms
here, we were all seated here and we got to know that we will be conducting
recruitment examinations on the 15th of March, 2014.
“That was the first day I heard
that. I did not hear from any board; there was no board meeting to that effect.
‘As a man in uniform you obey the
last order.’
Parradang went on: “Subsequently,
everybody that asked me when is Immigration recruitment before then, I used to
tell them that I don’t know but subsequently anybody that asked me, I would
reply that the Honourable Minister had declared categorically that we will
recruit on the 15th of March and that is what we are going to stick to.
“Then I sent the DCG Human
Resources to attend all subsequent meetings and when it came to the issue of
funding, he told me that they had made a budget of N212million to be used for
that exercise.
“I asked him where the money was
going to come from, you know that Immigration does not have such money. He said
it was expected that the company should pay for it. I said ‘okay, go and take
representatives of the service provider to the Honourable Minister of Interior,
maybe he would have funding for the exercise.
“He told me there was none till
about on 13th of March 2014 when N45million was made available for him to carry
out that exercise’.
“We were left with the option of
having to mobilise all our officers in the state commands to attend to the
recruitment exercise. We sent bulk SMS to all of them, saying, look, gentlemen,
this is the day we have to work with.
“All of them kept calling me to
ask how they were going to get money to do this exercise? I told them if any
money is given to me I will make it available to you.
“No money was made available to
the Nigerian Immigration Service and the exercise was supposed to be conducted.
“If you notice too there was no
advertisement, giving clear guidelines on how to go about it until the 14th of
March that people were asked to go to the various centres for the tests.
“I will like to state that on a
state-by-state basis, the Nigeria Immigration Service is deeply pained about
the events that led to loss of lives of 16 people.
“I want the figures to be
corrected. We had seven people that died in the Federal Capital Territory. We
had five that died in Rivers State. We had two that died in Niger State. We had
one in Bauchi. We had one in Edo. Those are the exact figures.
“On the fateful day when we
started hearing reports that this was what was happening in the field I came
back from Jos and I met the Secretary in his office we sat all through
till midnight getting direct reports from each of the state commands.
“We had given them clear
guidelines on what to do. We asked them to contact the regular stakeholders
that we normally meet together, like the FRSC, the NSCDC, hospital authorities,
that they should get people to assist us because this is a short notice thing,
but on that day the crowd was really overwhelming.”
Asked why he did not stop the
exercise, he said, “we were not the drivers of this process at all.
“So, the decision to stop it
would never have cone from me. I was not the driver of this process and my position
had been very clear on this.”
One why he did not see the
tragedy coming, Parradang said: “Of all the capacities that God has given human
beings, nobody knows what is going to happen tomorrow.
“All of us are optimistic,
basically. We were of the hope and of the belief that this is a genuine
intended activity that nobody would want anybody to lose his life or even get
injured. We did not and could not have seen that it was going to fail.”
He went on: “For all my years in
the Service, nobody has ever taken away the power to recruit from level one to
level seven from the NIS.”
Parradang said he protested in
writing, but was assured that his fears had been taken care of.
Most of the state commands of the
NIS told the committee that they received only N300, 000 out of N45 million
released by the consultant to the board.
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