By Rotimi Bello
It is strange to hear that job vacancies are been sold by the custodians of these sacred public institutions. A lot of youths whose family can afford it are patronizing this route, rather than wait for fake advertisement from the-so-called Federal Civil Service Commission without any cogent result to that effect.
I learnt recently that somebody got a job in a government agency and was posted to an office in Gwagwalada where there was no table and chair. The new employee has to pay for the chair and table. As successive governments strategise and device means to reduce corruption in the system, so the people saddled with responsibility of managing government agencies, departments and ministries are also scheming to burst the government stratagems to perpetuate their indiscretion of job selling.
Job selling racketeering is an abysmal issue that is becoming rampant across government agencies. There are cartels specializing in doing this in all government agencies, parastatals and ministries. Therefore, the human resources department of all government sectors need to be properly investigated by this government who rode to power on anti-corruption mantra.
It is a fact that job racketeering is ongoing and the people doing this are becoming embolden to advertise their trade to the highest bidder ranging from 500,000 thousand to 1.5 million and 2.5 million naira in some instance, depending on the agencies. In some cases, desperate buyers are often duped of their money by this faceless cartel in civil and public services. Accordingly, the price varies based on how juicy the agencies, ministries or commisions the applicants wish to work in.
Senator Borroface’s recent exposition and accusation of recruitment of language and religious graduate to National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) lend credence to this narrative. The senator said that against the international convention, 75% of the work force at NASRDA are unqualified to be there, because most of them study courses that are not related to the work of the agency. This is not about space agnecy alone, but almost all sectors of the Nigeria economy.
There is report of a retired director at the Nigeria apex Bank who reportedly sold his slot employment position – which he reserved for his son who incidentally had an extra academic year in the university and could not meet up – for million of nairas some years back. A friend was duped of N200,000 by those who promised to enlist his wife into one of the government departments.
Similarly, a nurse wrote a job placement exam to a leading government hospital in Abuja and came third out of multitude that wrote the exam. At the end of the exercise, her slot was given out to someone else who probably did not write or do well in the placement exam. For God’s sake, how can any reasonable person sacrifice competency for favouritism in health sector?
No department or sector of civil service or public service is immune from this rot – including public universities. Surprisingly, this iniquity has been extended to the states across the nation. The habit and disposition of selling jobs- which some of these big men in the present position got on a platter of gold – to the desperate youth seeking job placement is barbaric and unfortunate. It depicts us as worthless, greedy and selfish people who worship money.
Our value system is deteriorating and completely been eroded at all levels of our existence. The concept of “Omoluabi” literarily mean an “upright person” has long been deleted and completely obliterated from our word-stock.
The concept of meritocracy as one of the cardinal principles of public service is not relevant in Nigeria any longer, rather cronyism, tribalism, godfatherism, prebendalism and political affiliation are the yardstick for the recruitment into the civil service and public service. This is the basis for the dysfunctionality of Nigeria public institutions. Nigeria is being programmed to operate anticlockwise against all norms. The civil service-the supposed engine that propel public policies formulations and implementation – is riddled with imposition, job racketeering and favouritism.
It lacks objectivity, equity and justice in the treatment of staff. Some groups are naturally favoured by the virtue of their sectional origin. Some people who were named and fingered in some government agencies money laundering and those who retired voluntarily to join politics were surreptitiously railroaded back to the service to complete their years in service. What a system that legalize injustice at the expense of justice! The civil service is bleeding profusely because cronyism is hierarchically institutionalised as the order of the day.
The civil service has being highly corrupted by the polticians to satisfy their egoistical inclination. This is even affecting Nigerian security sectors under this current government of PMB more than any that have ruled this country in recent time. Even in the military, it is a matter of whom you know, the best people for the job do not go beyond application level because they did not have godfathers to pave way and recommend them for the enlistement. The only enlistment thrown open to members of the public is the ranks and files of the soldiers or the police which the politicians still hijack, manipulate and use as a political patronage to enlist majority of their political thugs into the police force and other para-military forces. Tellingly, most of the defunct SARS officers who legally committed series of crimes and atrocities by using the instrumentality of the state to maim, steal and kill the innocent citizens are product of systemic rot of public service.
Notably, all is not well with our public institutions because our mode of recruitment is subjective, parochial, ethnoculturally bias and against universally acceptable norms, and this often result to abysmal productivity even in policies making and implementations. The Civil service recruitment is not tranparent enough to attract the best brain; mojority of Nigerian Civil servants are obtuse, deaden and crude who still depend on paper work of preservation of materials and data through manual filing system which is obsolete, rather than automated information system of web application that is safer and reliable. The recent outcry by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) that an information file of a popular politician has disappeared from it archive is pointer to the fact that our public service institutions need to be throughly overhauled to meet up with current demand.
Each day, right before our very eyes, Nigeria best brains are being systematically poached by the western countries (Europe and America) to boost and sustain their virile system in diverse fields of human endevaour. This is no longer slavery but brain darin through tactical mobility of labour. A healthcare recruitment agency in UK is specailised in recruiting Nigerians doctors and nurses by paying their expenses for IELTS academic exam and all travelling expenses of candidate families that meet up with their recruitment criteria. While all these advance countries like U.K, Canada, Australia and U.S are busy projecting and preparing their nations for life after the COVID-19 pandemic by recruiting our competent professionals to develop their country, our leaders are busy arguing and fighting over herdsmen-farmers clashes; defending bandits and soliciting amnesty for them and permutating over who will succeed PMB in 2023.
My consolation in all this saga is that we are not created or destined to be in the wrong part of the world or in a wrong country; but rather we have been unfortunate to have always elected what Chief Duro Onabule called “mascara, jester and clown” leaders with a parochial view about the concept of statehood.
Rotimi S. Bello, writes via [email protected]