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| Abba Moro |
Nigerian Immigration Service on Tuesday said the
vacant posts in the agency were not advertised because it wanted to avoid a
repeat of the rush during the 2006 recruitment exercise when many applicants
died.
The service also denied that it allotted some
vacancy slots to the President’s wife, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, saying the
report was “far from the truth.”
The service had come under fire for allegedly
conducting a recruitment exercise without advertisement, allotting slots to
Patience, and favouring applicants from the South-East where the NIS
Controller, Rose Uzoma, comes from.
Uzoma also allegedly offered hundreds of job
slots to top government functionaries, (the Presidency, 250 slots);
(Jonathan’s mother, 40 slots); First Lady, 100 slots); (Interior Minister, Abba
Moro, 100 slots); (two commissioners of the Immigration board, 30 slots each);
and (the Federal Character Commission, 250 slots.)
The House of Representatives Committee on Federal
Character, which was said to have begun an investigation into the exercise, was
reported to have asked the NIS to suspend the exercise.
Uzoma, who appeared before the House
committee to defend the accusations reportedly told the lawmakers
that the service did not advertise the jobs so as not to unknowingly employ
terrorists.
The NIS boss also claimed she obtained approval
from the Head of Service of the Federation to employ 4,560 persons.
But the NIS Public Relations Officer, Joachim
Olumba, told our correspondent on the telephone on Tuesday that thousands of
applicants had submitted applications to the service, adding that the qualified
ones were recently shortlisted for possible employment.
He said, “The media reports on the
recruitment were mischievous and far from the truth. We didn’t advertise
the vacancies because we don’t want a repeat of what happened during the 2006
recruitment exercise when many applicants died.”
Meanwhile, the Minister of Interior, has
cancelled the exercise following the controversy that has surrounded the
process.
The minister’s directive was contained in a
statement by his Special Assistant on Media, Ubong Udoh.
Punch
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