Interior minister Comrade Abba Moro yesterday refuted Monday’s allegations by the chairman of the Federal Character Commission (FCC) that the ministry ran an illegal online job racket, describing it as blatant falsehood. Moro distanced the ministry from the purported website on the second day of a Senate public hearing investigating reported job rackets among government ministries, department and agencies (MDAs).The Interior minister informed the Senate joint committee that the ministry had sent a proposal to the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) on its plan to outsource its planned electronic recruitment programme to improve its efficiency and credibility.
The Interior Minister told the Senator Dahiru Awaisu Kuta-led joint committee on Federal Character, Inter-Governmental Affairs and Employment, Labour and Productivity: “...we don’t have online recruitment arrangement in place in the ministry. We have never, officially, to the best of my knowledge, asked anybody to place applications online. Certain persons went to press and because of the sensitivity of recruitments, certain people went to town that the ministry was engaged in unwholesome activities; it’s not true.
“Let me say, therefore, that in the course of our recruitment, replacement exercises, we have had recurring decimal or incidents of complaints and allegations of some level of scam in the exercise, and I want to say here that this is as a result of the situation in which we found ourselves in this country – the number of persons that are unemployed and the number of persons itching for recruitment.
“In the process, it was brought to our notice that certain persons engaged in unwholesome practices of defrauding members of the public of funds, payments for jobs and the rest of that.
“To the best of our knowledge and ability, we have not been able to establish very specific cases against individuals within the ministry. I want to say that in recognition of those allegations, the ministry has taken several steps to make sure that undiscerning members of the public are not unnecessarily defrauded.
“This certainly is not true. We have made strenuous effect to make sure that we do not shortchange Nigerians. I have said time without number that it is criminal for anybody to take money from unemployed youths to get them employed.
“I equally want to say that even on a particular case where we had reason to intervene that certain members were defrauding the public, I directed the Intelligence Unit of the Nigeria Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), intimating them of the activities of one particular person, that he be arrested and possibly prosecuted.”
He also noted that the NSCDC had arrested certain persons, with some of them taken to court, arraigned and imprisoned over the matter.
LEADERSHIP recalls that AbdulRahman had told the Senate joint committee on Monday that “the Ministry of Interior opened a website and directed people to deposit CV’s there without indicating what position they are applying for. That kind of action will drive these young men and women into the hands of fraudsters.”
The Senate launched a probe into recruitments into the federal civil service after senators considered a motion on the recent employment racket at the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), a saga that cost the head of the agency, Rosemary Chinyere Uzoma, her job. The panel was detailed to turn in a report in two weeks.
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