Pastor Chris Okotie of Household of God International Ministries posted this an article on his official Facebook page on the tragic stampede at the Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment.
Read;
The big news this week was the
inauguration of the National Conference, but the deaths of more than 16
young applicants who died in Abuja and other venues, during the Nigerian
Immigration Service, NIS recruitment exercise, overshadowed it. This
tragedy mirrors the desperate situation of Nigeria.
One only hopes that this unfortunate
loss of lives, coupled with the incessant Boko Haram killings and other
youth-based violence, would serve as a wake-up call to the summiteers,
that this country needs a new governance paradigm. If the conference
cannot produce that, then the over N7 billion invested in it would
amount to another colossal waste of our scarce national resources.
It is an irony that each delegate would
earn a whopping N12 million for the 3-month duration of the conference.
By conservative estimates, N12 million is enough to provide
self-employment for 12 resourceful graduates, and N7 billion could do
likewise for thousands, some of whom perished under chaotic conditions
in stadia around the country, while waiting for a poorly organised
aptitude test by the NIS. The young graduate job-seekers who turned out
for the tests filled up many stadia around the country, as if they came
to watch high-profile football matches.
These hapless chaps paid N1,000.00 (One
Thousand Naira) processing fee each. So, the Nigerian Immigration
Service must have made quite some money, considering that in Lagos and
Abuja alone, over 125,000 applicants turned up. We may be looking at
millions of Naira that this monetised recruitment exercise generated for
the NIS. There was record turnout in each of the 34 states for just
45,000 slots that the NIS advertised. The alarming job application
horror is a clear evidence of the inability of our public institutions
to manage events, resulting in poor crowd control and avoidable deaths
through stampede. This is not an isolated case, it is a regular
occurrence.
When things go wrong, our leaders seldom
take responsibility. The NIS has tried to duck charges of culpability,
by claiming that it outsourced the recruitment exercise to a private
firm which actually collected the N1,000.00 levy. As usual, a panel
would be setup to investigate this incident, followed by a white paper,
and then, the report may end up gathering dust in a cabinet somewhere in
Abuja, while government officials focus on the more important 2015
general elections in a country where competition for political power is
about resource control, not the promotion of the general good of the
people.
The fact that four expectant mothers
died in this incident, with about 700 others reportedly injured, is
enough reason why those who organised this event should not escape
appropriate sanctions. Unfortunately, the Jonathan Administration is not
known to punish errant public officials, although the NIS boss and the
Internal Affairs Minister have been queried. In other countries where
human life is valued, the President should compensate the victims and,
more importantly, prevent a future re-occurrence. But the Federal
Government has other priorities.
For me, and also for the FRESH
Democratic Party, which I lead, nothing else matters in our quest for a
functional, self-accounting and representative democracy, than a
fundamental change of the prevailing order which is responsible for our
national predicament. It should be reasonably assumed that delegates to
the conference would know this, but I have my fears.
Many commentators have observed that the
composition of the delegates to this National Conference is skewed in
favour of the old politicians, and some of those who ran this country
aground. How can we expect any meaningful change from this set of
people? 20th century ideas cannot solve 21st century problems. If you
look critically, the composition of the participants in this conference
reflects the geriatric propensity of our polity.
All the progressive nations of the
world, especially those who have graduated from under-development to
emerging markets, are being governed today by new sets of leaders, whose
orientation reflects the new world order, and are thus able to
successfully confront the challenges they encounter in their respective
nations.
As this NIS recruitment tragedy shows,
our meal ticket educational system is not designed to drive industrial
development or produce resourceful, self-employed folks who can create
opportunities, rather depend on employment. The belated introduction of
entrepreneur studies in the newly remoulded college curricula is like
putting the cart before the horse. While vocational studies have been
introduced, there are no teachers to instruct carpenters, electricians
etc.
I have long been advocating a shift in
the paradigm of our educational sector, which should be anchored on
Human Capital Development. Science subjects are foundation of
technology. If I were the President, this would be the mantra that would
drive my reform agenda because without a solid, qualitative, continuous
stream of local production of graduates in the technical, or
science-related courses, our dream of industrial revolution as recently
articulated in a widely publicised launch by Mr. President, would be a
mirage.
The secret of Asia industrial miracle is
that, leaders of that continent sent their students to Europe and
America. The returning Asian students, who went to learn the
technological wizardry of the West, laid the foundation of the
technological revolution that produced the Tigers, who now threaten the
scientific dominance of Europe and America. This is a model we could
learn from.
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