The earthly transition to the Saints triumphant on January 13th
2014 of my beloved father and best friend Mazi Cyprian Okorieocha Onwubiko
taught me that there are significant events that happen in our lives that have
transformative value chain. His death has brought the meaning of immortality
closer home to me and has instilled in me the discipline to embrace my
religious belief with more conviction.
On a national scale, one issue that made impact in the corporate
life of Nigeria is the mass murder through administrative mistakes by the Nigerian
Ministry of Interior and the Nigerian Immigration Services of over 18 youthful
Nigerian job seekers during the ill-fated March 15th 2014 recruitment
exercise in all parts of Nigeria and especially at the Abuja National Stadium
in which young and upwardly looking Nigerian youths in search of better lives
were killed during stampede that was occasioned by poor coordination and crowd
control.
The man who wears the shoes as the President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria Dr. Good luck Jonathan has since the sad incidents happened
all across Nigeria, come under intense pressure to take action against the
minister of Interior and his subordinates at the Nigerian Immigration Services
whose woeful negligence and criminal dereliction of duty resulted in the
national tragedy that characterized the shabbily conducted aptitude test for
recruitment into the Nigerian Immigration Services. Jonathan has
reportedly summoned the duo to appear before him at the State House in Abuja
whereby they were reportedly queried.
This 'slap in the wrists' approach of the President towards Mr.
Abba Moro the minister of Interior and the Comptroller General of the Nigerian
Immigration Services has received widespread condemnation from a cross section
of Nigerians who felt that it is insufficient to deter future occurrence
given that a similar recruitment fiasco happened few years back with the same
agency of government which also cost the precious lives of young applicants but
no single government official was sanctioned.
Prominent Nigerians and civil rights groups have called on the
President to summarily sack the duo and all other top officials of Government
that not only bungled the recruitment exercise but clearly extorted the job
seekers who were tricked into paying N1000 application fee and the forms sold
online to over six million applicants when it was clear to government that only
four thousand job vacancies were available and that preponderant percentage of
these job openings have been shared to state governors and the members of the
National Assembly.
To compound the national insult created by this fiasco of a recruitment sham of the Nigerian Immigration Services, the Chairman of the House committee on Immigration/interior accused of cornering some of the job slots was quoted in the media to have stated that there was nothing untoward in allocating secretly job slots to favored political office holders and he even had the temerity to insult our national psyche when he reportedly said that members of the National Assembly are also Nigerians and therefore should be given slots of job vacancies. What a shame!
It was therefore not surprising that
most Nigerians don't trust that the National Assembly members can competently
and fairly probe a matter in which their hands were soiled deeply. Nothing good
will come out of the decision of the two chambers to probe the stampede that
led to this national tragedy that gave us international opprobrium.
It is in the light of the
overwhelming evidence that most Nigerians are not happy that quick remedial
actions are not been adopted by the Nigerian state that President Jonathan
demonstrated that he has a milk of human kindness and can indeed act decisively
contrary to the impression his seeming inaction over several national
matters have created in the minds of most Nigerians.
Stories filtering out of the State
House in Abuja says the President has ordered the cancelation of the ill-fated
job interviews of the Immigration and has also offered automatic employment to
all the injured even as he allocated three slots to each of the families of the
dead.
But are these measures far-reaching
enough? If you ask me, I will answer in the negative because if the two persons
who should take responsibility for this national shame are left in their jobs
it therefore means that these young job seekers who were massacred died in
vain.
The President should therefore go a
step further by sacking the minister of Interior and the Comptroller
General of Immigration, order their prosecution for both acts bordering on
official dereliction of duties occasioning deaths and aggravated injuries to
many of the job seekers. Let section 6 of the 1999 constitution which gives the
judicial powers of the federation to the court system be allowed to take its
full course. Let the Federal Attorney General and the state Attorneys General
whereby these job seekers died take action to drag the minister and the
Comptroller General to court.
Section 33[1] of the constitution of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria provides thus; " Every person has a Right
to life and no one SHALL be deprived intentionally of his life save in the
execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which
he/she has been found guilty in Nigeria".
The full intent of this section is
that the Nigerian state lacks the power to deprive law abiding Nigerians of
their constitutionally guaranteed right to life. Indeed the fundamental
objectives and directive principles of state policy is of the considered
position that the welfare and security of every citizen is the primary duty of
government.
It therefore follows that this act
of treachery, corporate fraud called immigration recruitment exercise which
occasioned the stampede that led to the untimely demise of youthful Nigerians
in their dozens must be appropriately viewed as serious crimes against humanity
and the officials fingered to be remotely or immediately connected with this
deadly scam must be brought before the law to face the music squarely because
the law should not be made to operate as a respecter of persons of high
governmental status.
Nigeria must eliminate impunity from
our body politics and whomsoever commits atrocity must be sanctioned
appropriately in compliance with the constitutional provisions.
+Emmanuel Onwubiko; Head; Human Rights Writers Association
of Nigeria; blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com; http://www.huriwa.org/.
19/3/2014
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