The Federal Government has threatened to sanction its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that engage in backdoor recruitment despite the employment embargo it imposed since 2020.
The culprits include the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
Investigations by The PUNCH showed that some MDAs issued employment letters to jobseekers without seeking the mandatory approval of the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) and the Federal Civil Service Commission, while others replaced retired or dead officials with friends and family members.
Some civil servants, who were engaged in employment racketeering, had earlier been caught in the Federal Ministry of Works. The OHCSF also uncovered over 1,500 civil servants with fake employment letters in a ministry.
Corroborating this, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan said that her office had detected in the Federal Civil Service, 1,618 workers whose letters of employment were either fake or illegal. This is despite the embargo placed on employment by the government.
In 2019, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was reported to have employed many individuals without following the due recruitment process. Many groups, including the Niger Delta Youth Consort of Nigeria (NDYCN), protested against the corpotarion for excluding the region and southerners in the secret recruitment. NDYCN National Coordinator, Chuks Onuoha described the practice as unacceptable.
But the then NNPC spokesman, Kenny Obateru denied the recruitment. According to him, what the NNPC management did was to fill the vacancies with personnel who were already in the system and were qualified rather than recruiting fresh ones from outside the system.
But applicants, who got to the final stage of the screening process, accused the oil giant of substituting their names with favoured candidates.
“The NNPC replaced most of the EH positions under the guise of a hurriedly planned scheme codenamed Internal Open Resource where some people, who contracted third party staff members and did not meet the requisite experience and qualifications in the advertised EH vacancies, are being deployed through the backdoor in an unfortunate and disappointing bid to jettison the EH merit list”, the President, Transparency in Recruitment at Ministries, Departments and Agencies, Felix Sunday had lamented.
The current NNPC spokesman, Garba Deen Muhammad asked The PUNCH to send a message to him on WhatsApp three Fridays ago, but he had yet to respond to the message as of the time of filing this report.
Similarly, the FIRS was enmeshed in a recruitment scandal in 2021 after it emerged that it secretly engaged 2,000 workers, a development that put a strain on its budget.
The Nigerian Civil Service Union, which disclosed this in a petition to the FIRS Chairman, Muhammad Namu in June 2021, also revealed that the agency was finding it difficult to pay salaries at some point after the secret engagement of the staff members within a period of 18 months.
It demanded an end to the re-engagement of retired directors and other categories of staff.
The media aide to the FIRS chairman, Tobi Wojuola refused to respond to the allegations against the service when contacted.
Reacting to allegations of illegal recruitment, NCS spokesman, Timi Bomodi insisted that there had been no backdoor recruitment in the service.
He said: “We advertise every recruitment in newspapers; there is no ministry and department of government in Nigeria that is as transparent in its recruitment process as the Nigeria Customs Service.
“All the 774 local government areas are represented in our recruitment. Applicants are made to sit aptitude tests and are selected based on their competences. You don’t need to know anybody before you can be employed in the service”.
Also, the CBN was accused of recruiting 909 staff members within two years without advertising the vacancies. Although the Federal Character Commission investigated the allegation, nothing has been heard about the case.
Jobseekers have, however, described the recruitment process in the MDAs as lacking transparency.
A former applicant to the NCS, Sola Ogunbiyi said the recruitment process for government jobs in the country was fraught with irregularities.
He said: “I applied to join the Customs in 2019. I am not happy with the entire process. The entire process made me lose interest in Federal Government jobs and shaped my view that the jobs are only for those with connection.
“You cannot tell me that all the people working in the civil service were employed based on merit. I got to my hometown because I am based in Lagos and heard about how some people had been helped by a popular politician to join the Customs and other government agencies just to service his structure.
“The following year, I got a job at one of the leading commercial banks in the country after a rigorous exercise than that of the Customs. Look, the qualities of those being employed by government agencies and private firms are miles apart; this boils down to the recruitment process. Until we get it right, a lot of things will continue to go wrong”.
Another applicant, Yemisi Odubanjo stated: “I have tried to apply to federal agencies but all my efforts are futile. That has not been the same with my efforts at private organisations.
“I have been able to get some of the jobs I applied for. I think the process of recruitment in government agencies is not transparent enough. It is either you know someone or bribe your way through; otherwise, you cannot get a job solely on your certificate and potential.
“I applied during the last FIRS recruitment and that was the last time I sought government jobs. I was asked to pay a huge amount to get the job, which I could not afford”.
Commenting on the issue, a Senior Vice President for Africa, Human Health Education and Research Foundation, Dr Ifeanyi Nsofor said the budget would suffer if there were backdoor recruitments.
He said: “The problem is that how will they pay those who are employed through the backdoor? Who will pay them? For instance, if it is the health sector, that aspect of the budget suffers as a result because they have to start paying people who they didn’t plan for while taking money.
“So, service delivery will suffer; people may die if those services are not provided, and people can have all sorts of complications that they may have to live with for their lifetime.
“Ultimately, it is a matter of life and death because people will not work for free. You have to pay them and where will you get the money from? Something has to be given and most of the time, it is from service delivery, drugs, or other commodities or other capital projects.”
Credit: The PUNCH
