Reps call on FG to cancel advert waivers to MDAs

The House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee probing employment racketeering in Federal Government agencies has said it will recommend the abolition of waivers to bypass advertisement of employment opportunities.

The Committee Chairman, Yusuf Gagdi, said this during the resumption of the investigative hearing on Monday.

This was as he accused the Registrar of the National Postgraduate Medical College, Prof. Fatiu Arogundade, of lop-sidedness in their recruitment based on the agency’s presentation at the hearing.

Gagdi worried that almost all the government agencies that had appeared so far for the investigation were carrying out their employment secretly as they always applied for waivers to avoid advertising for various frivolous reasons.

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Gagdi noted the abolishment of waivers for employment advertisements will do more good to the country.

He said, “We will abolish the use of waivers because waiver is not for the good of this country. It is an abuse of the citizens of Nigeria. When they give you waivers, you share the slots among Directors in the agencies and the political masters that superintend over those agencies. Whether it is the National Assembly, I don’t care. But whenever waiver is given, you do not advertise and give opportunity to citizens of this country to have access to recruitment.”

One of the lawmakers in the committee, Ahmadu Jaha, pointed out that nobody from the entire Northeast region was captured in the recruitment carried out by the agency

This, he said, contributes to the upsurge of insurgency in the zone as opportunities that should be made public for all to apply for are hidden from the people.

He said, “We are all aware of what happened as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency and I don’t want to believe you that nobody applied in the whole of the North-East if advertisements were properly done. In my local government alone, Gwoza, we have more than 100 medical doctors, more than 50 consultants and more than 20 professors in medicine.

“There is no way you can look at us as if we do not know what we are doing saying that nobody applied. Let me tell you one thing. If they are searching for sponsors of Boko Haram, if they are searching for the main causes of Boko Haram, your organisation is one of them. This is because one of the main reasons why people join Boko Haram is because they are being short-changed.

“One of the reasons people join Boko Haram is because they do not have anything to do for a living. Somebody cannot go to school and spend years and go to Ibadan and write examinations and become a consultant and now you say you advertise a position and he is there doing nothing for a living and he did not apply?

“How do you expect peace in the country if in the whole region, six states, there is no single employee of your organisation. This is to tell you that if we can peruse all the more than 700 or 1000 MDAs in the country, we may hardly have less than five per cent from the North East and you expect to have peace. So we are not happy. We are saying this before the camera and we expect everybody to know.”