At last, succour came to some of the family members of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment tragedy on March 15, last year as President Goodluck Jonathan splashed N75m on 15 victims and 35 job vacancies to family members of those who lost their lives in the botched exercise. Each of the families of the 15 victims was given N5 million. The President announced the gestures at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja yesterday, exactly 368 days after the incident that left the country in trauma.
Jonathan had last year promised to employ three members each from the families of the deceased and cancelled the exercise and followed it up with the setting up a committee to conduct a new exercise. Each of the families of the deceased was handed a cheque of N5 million, while three family members were each given employment letters.
Speaking shortly after handing out the employment letters and cheques to the families, the President said the incident would never repeat itself, adding: “This will be the last of such things.”
He explained that the delay in issuing out the employment, as promised, was predicated on the need to sort out some issues bothering on regulations in the ministries. The President said the monies given to the families should not be seen as compensation, as they cannot replace the lives lost.
The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), David Paradang, said that out of the 45 candidates, 10 had to be replaced because they did not meet the criteria of the service.
He explained that some of them were shorter than required, overweight or over-aged, adding that the families of the 10 have been asked to bring replacement for the slots.
The NIS boss noted that some of them who are graduates were employed as Assistant Superintendent of Immigration; those with National Certificate of Education (NCE) were employed as Assistant Inspectors, while those with the West African School Certificate (WASC) were employed as Immigration Officers 3.
The service has resumed the employment exercise and Paradang said the service intends to recruit a total of 2,000 officers. Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, pledged that those wounded in the exercise would not be forgotten, but would be included in the second phase recruitment, which is ongoing and would last till May this year.
