Unemployed Youths at the Mercy of Job Racketeers: Who Will Save them?

Babalola Yusuf Abiola

On Tuesday, 15th of January 2013, it was all over the internet, social media and news that the controller general of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Mrs Rose Chinyere Uzoma has been relieved of her duty by President Goodluck Jonathan, though no reason was given when the news was first broken to member of the public but before the end of the day reason was made known.

According to the reason given for her dismissal, it was believed that the president was embarrassed by the latest recruitment done by the service where the process was on the basis of the highest bidder without taking into cognizance due process and federal character as entrenched in the constitution hence her sack was imminent.

Though, the stance was hailed by Nigerians especially the youths that are mostly affected by this injustice, but will this be the end of job racketeering in the country? A situation where somebody who doesn’t know people in the corridor of power or who cannot afford to pay is denied employment in the country civil service or agencies.

In the Nigeria of today getting a federal, state or even local government civil service job depends on who you or your parents know in government, I could remember when I just finished my youth service and was searching for job my dad who could do little or nothing asked me to see one of his friends who was working in the Lagos State Ministry Of Information and Orientation to help me get job in the Lagos state civil service, but on getting there what he asked me was more than I could handle.

He said, “My brother, employment into the civil service is mainly based on politics and who you know in the political circle, your daddy told me you are from Ogun State, so if your dad can get a letter from Chief Segun Osoba or from the Governor of the state then you will be employed,” he said.

I thanked him for his advise and said to myself, my father has never in his life participated in politics neither does he have flair for politics so how would this man want me to get this contact he supposedly think will get me a job in the ministry.

I left and since then I never called him and he never also bothered calling me, later I conducted a background check on the way recruitment are done into the Nigerian civil service and I realised that recruitment was never done on merit rather it is through high powered connection with people in the corridor of power.

Whenever there is recruitment slots (opportunities) are given to party members, friends, senior staff in the various ministries while a relatively little space are left for the children of the poor in the society or for those whose father can afford the exorbitant fee demanded from them to get the employment.

How else can we explain a situation whereby a graduate who is either unemployed or that just finish from the polytechnic or university was asked to pay as much as N200, 000 to get a job then we need to know that we are heading for doom in this country.

In the word of a senator Ali Ndume, from Bornu state, when this issue was discussed on the floor of the senate yesterday, he explained how a constituent comes to him to plead for money saying he wants to get a job in the civil service.

His words, “A constituent came to me that he needed N200, 000 to secure employment in one parastatal. When I refused to give him the money, he said that was the only requirement needed and if I didn’t give him the money, the job was as good as gone.

“After much pleading, I caved in and gave him the N200,000 only for him to come back to me days later that the price was no longer N200,000 but N400,000. This person was a graduate of Geography who had stayed at home for four years without a job.”

Then if a senator could say this in the hallowed chamber what hope is left for the children of the poor in the country or people who don’t have access to a senator that will give him the money to pay those who ask for bribe from them.

I would not forget in a hurry how my sister and four of her friends were asked to part away with N30, 000 in other to get a job with the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) back then in 2009 when she just finish her youth service, then all the money she made in her service year from Personal Practice (PP) she engaged in was collected.

But to this present moment she is still expecting call-up or appointment letter from the officer they paid money to, though the man told them later that it has gotten to a stage where he could not do anything again because the chairman of the Agency, Alhaji Ahmadu Giade has involved himself in the recruitment for a reason best known to him that was how her money entered a bottomless pit till today.

What about the recent replacement by The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) where it is the highest bidder that win the race, a lot of people both qualified and unqualified youths were employed based on how much you can offer or who submit your name to the corps authority.

Lot of my friends who are based in Abuja that can afford the N200,000 price tag was given the job or people who got letter from either a senator or house of representative member was also given employment while we who knew nobody or couldn’t pay the money demanded were left in the cold.

Now, what parents do is to either join politics in other to be able to get employment for their children when they are out of school or to go for loan whenever there is recruitment in government parastatal because truth be told, EMPLOYMENT INTO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES or parastatals IS FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDERS OR LOYAL PARTY MEMBERS CHILDREN.

 Also, personally I have closed my mind away from any government job because my father is not a politician neither is he a money bag that can afford those outrageous money job racketeers are asking from job seekers, so the better I concentrate on the private sector for a better job the good for me and my family.

Investigation: Vice President Sambo Chose Deputy Governor Few Hours After Yakowa Died In Plane Crash

SaharaReporters has authoritatively report that despite the denial, Vice President Namadi Sambo is the man that chose Ambassador Nuhu Audu Bajoga as the Deputy Governor of Kaduna State few hours after it was confirmed that Governor Patrick Yakowa died in the plane crash that occurred in Bayelsa State on 15th December, 2012.
The confirmation gotten from a credible source in Aso Rock, the seat of Nigerian Presidency in Abuja clearly proved that the choice of Ambassador Bajoga is not choice of new Kaduna State Governor, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero, but that of the Vice President.
The source who confirmed the story added that even President Goodluck Jonathan was fully briefed of the development and got a real picture of how his Vice President is juggling the turbulent politics of Kaduna State to match his own unpublicized presidential ambition.
Investigations carried out by SaharaReporters also revealed that Sambo is unilaterally running the affairs of the state from Abuja and has been shuttling to Kaduna mobilizing support for his godson governor. He was in Kaduna on Monday where he met with all traditional rulers and elected public officials in which he pleaded for support to the new governor and distributed largesse to all attendees of his Kaduna meetings.
The source said, “The choice of who will be the next deputy governor of Kaduna State was taken here in Abuja, just few hours after it was confirmed that Governor Yakowa was dead. The Vice President took that position and quickly chose Bajoga who was in Kaduna.  Bajoga was told as well as all the key players in the Vice President’s camp. We were here in Abuja when the news of the crash occurred, and the President was greatly troubled because of his good relationship with Governor Yakowa of Kaduna State. And only later on, the President got wind of Sambo’s decision.
“The whole was done here; they called the man from here and told him their demands. While all the noise of the battling for deputy governor was going on in Kaduna, the search has already been concluded and that is why the President refused to dabble into the matter, knowing that Sambo has chosen deputy governor few hours after the crash.”
The source further said that, Sambo’s action to remove Bajoga, who was at the time chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state was Sambo's way to fix his own crony as chairman of the party.
Sambo, according to other sources in Kaduna and Zaria has a crack team of his pundits who are presently working with the governor on how to manage Kaduna's tense politics of religion and ethnicity.
The source concluded that close associates of President Jonathan are watching Kaduna politics with keen interests and have been meeting with a consistent group of Southern Kaduna youth that has been opposing the choice of Bajoga which they perceived as Sambo’s bidding.

MAPOLY graduate wins 6^th Ships & Ports Essay Competition

 Babalola Yusuf Abiola

Miss Abimbola Olotu, a 2010 graduate of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, Ogun State, has emerged the winner of the sixth Ships & Ports Annual national Essay Competition in Lagos.

She however carted away the N100, 000 star prize cheque though, Olotu’s feat at the prize presentation ceremony makes her the first female star prize winner since the competition, which has transformed into a strong brand, kicked off in 2006.

Aside olotu other price winners in this year’s competition include Mr. Onyema Emmanuel Ngwakwe, Sifax Group Prize for Creative Writing & Presentation; and Mr. Babatunde Bello, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Prize for Outstanding Essay.

 A Correspondent of Businessday newspaper, Miss Uzoamaka Anagor; and Messrs Ejike-Ume Felix Ifeanyi, Daniel Henry Onovo and Christopher Okeke also won the  NIMASA Prize for Outstanding Essay.

It would be recalled that one of this year’s winners of the NIMASA Prize for Outstanding Essay, Messr Ejike-Ume Felix Ifeanyi, a lawyer, was the star prize winner of the 2009 edition of the competition.

A journalist with the Nigerian Tribune, Peter Chukwuma Okparaocha, won the 5^th edition in 2011; a Post-Graduate student of the University of Ibadan, Mr. Uchenna Jerome Orji, won the star prize of the 4^th edition carting away a new Kia Piccanto.

 Ejike-Ume Felix Ifeanyi won the 3^rd edition; Mr. Adewale Opeyemi, a Masters degree student of Archaeology at the Federal University of Technology, Minna Niger State won the 2^nd edition while a naval officer; Navy Captain Atakpa Sunday Daniel won the star prize in the maiden edition of the competition.

In his welcome address, the Chief Executive Officer of Ships & Ports Communication Company, Mr. Bolaji Akinola disclosed that the Essay Competition was designed “to encourage Nigerians to think aloud about the maritime sector and to revive and sustain vivid, contentious and creative essay writing about the sector.

He continued, “The enormous interest the maiden edition generated among Nigerians and industry stakeholders were the stamp of approval we needed to institutionalize the competition”, Akinola stated.

How Jonathan & Obasanjo Fell Apart… Possible Implications For Jonathan

In Abeokuta last Friday, governors, leaders of the National Assembly and political heavy weights gathered to lay the foundation stone of a mosque at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) complex.

 Even former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who has had a bitter political battle with former President Obasanjo attended the event and donated N5 million towards the project.

Conspicuously absent was President Goodluck Jonathan. He was not there in person. He was not represented by any minister or presidential aide.

President Jonathan’s absence at an event that touches the heart of his benefactor is one of the manifestations of the divide between the two leaders.

Obasanjo it was who influenced Jonathan’s political rise as Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, through Governor, Vice President, Acting President, substantive President and Jonathan’s election as president in the 2011 elections. Though unspoken, the feud is now in the open, like a festering wound.

Obasanjo, on his part, has kept away from the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in the last few months. He didn’t attend the last Council of State meeting in July. His voice was not heard sympathising or commiserating with the first family over the illness of Dame Patience Jonathan and the death of Jonathan’s younger brother, the late Meni, respectively. Instead, the volley of attacks and counter-attacks directly and by proxy has replaced the filial relationship between them.

Obasanjo even dumped his position as chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) board of trustees – a position he fought very hard to keep. Ever since that decision, things continued to fall apart between the two.

How Jonathan and Obasanjo fell apart
The crack between Jonathan and Obasanjo began to emerge shortly after the 2011 presidential election. A close associate of Obasanjo revealed to Sunday Trust that after the bitter battle before, during and after the polls, Obasanjo asked Jonathan to mend the divide between the North and South by visiting those who contested against him in the presidential primaries and the election.

But Jonathan refused to do so. Secondly, it was alleged that Obasanjo warned Jonathan against reducing the presidency to an Ijaw affair, when it was apparent that the president had surrounded himself with his kinsmen, some of them ex-militants. Again, Jonathan ignored him.

Then, when Jonathan wanted to constitute his cabinet, it was gathered, Obasanjo recommended some names from the South-West, considering the fact that the region which voted for Jonathan overwhelmingly had no governor. Sunday Trust gathered that Obasanjo was shocked when Jonathan threw away his list, and the South-West did not make it to any of the top 10 cabinet positions.

Combined with the suspicion that Jonathan may have deliberately traded the South-West governorship positions with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to enable him win the presidential election, Obasanjo felt used and dumped. To worsen the situation, it was alleged that the president stopped picking Obasanjo’s calls.

Obasanjo turns critic of Jonathan administration

Indications that Obasanjo accepted his maltreatment and was looking in a different direction, perhaps, to take his pound of flesh, manifested in reports alleging that he was looking North-ward for Jonathan’s replacement, come 2015. 

Though he denied ever endorsing Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as his choices for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) presidential flag bearers in 2015, Obasanjo’s body language told the world that he had shifted his support from Jonathan.

 At local and international fora, he took a swipe on the Jonathan administration for wasting the country’s foreign reserve, put at about $35 billion in 2007. Obasanjo had said, “We left what we call excess crude, let’s build it for rainy day, up to $35 billion; within three years, the $35 billion disappeared. Whether the money disappeared or, like the governor said, it was shared, the fact remains that $35 billion disappeared from the foreign reserve I left behind in office. When we left that money, we thought we were leaving it for the rainy day… But my brother said the rain is not falling now.

But the fact is that when the rain is falling, we will have nothing to cover our heads with because we have blown it off. The Chinese do not think that way.” The statement was an allusion to the Jonathan administration, as both foreign reserve and excess crude account sank shortly after the 2011 elections.Obasanjo’s statements became more and more critical of the Jonathan administration.

On November 11, he spoke in Dakar, Senegal about the alarming rate of unemployment in the country, and concluded that the country was sitting on a time-bomb.

 He told the gathering at an entrepreneurship programme under the auspices of that Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the African Development Bank that when he became president, youth unemployment was put at 72 per cent, but that he reduced it to about 52 per cent.

Now, it has ballooned to unmanageable proportion. Obasanjo underscored his fears with this remark: “I am afraid. And when a General says he is afraid, that means the danger ahead is real and potent. Despite the imminent threat to Nigeria’s nationhood there is no serious, realistic short or long term solution to youth unemployment.”

Though Obasanjo argued that his remarks were not meant to instigate Nigerians against government, few days after the Dakar event, he was in Warri, Delta State to frontally attack Jonathan over his ‘weak’ approach to insecurity. 

At the 40th anniversary of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s call to ministry at the Word of Life Bible Church, Obasanjo said, “They (Boko Haram) stated their grievances and I promised to relay them to the authorities in power, because that was the best I could do. I did report. But my fear at that time is still my fear till today. When you have a sore and fail to attend to it quickly, it festers and grows to become something else.

“Whichever way, you just have to attend to it. Don’t leave it unattended to. On two occasions I had to attend to the problem I faced at that time. I sent soldiers to a place and 19 of them were killed. If I had allowed that to continue, I will not have authority to send security whether police, soldier and any force any where again. So, I had to nip it in the bud and that was the end of that particular problem.”

Referring to criticisms that he foisted Jonathan on the nation, Obasanjo said, “The beauty of democracy is that power rests in the people, and every elected person would seek your votes to come back; if you don’t want him, he won’t come back.”

Jonathan fires back

Obasanjo’s reference to how he tackled the Odi crisis attracted a length remark from Jonathan during the presidential media chat on Sunday, November 18. The tragedy, which happened on November 20, 1999 led to the killing of many persons in the Bayelsa State community. 

Though Obasanjo said it halted militants’ attacks on the army, Jonathan disagreed, bluntly saying, “When the Odi matter came up, I was the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, and I can give you the narratives of what led to the Odi crisis. The peak of the activities of the militancy in Niger Delta was when 12 police officers were killed in a cold blooded murder. That made the federal government to invade Odi. And after that invasion, the governor and I visited Odi.

“Ordinarily, the governor and the deputy governor were not supposed to move together under such a situation. And we saw some dead people mainly old men and women and also children.

None of those militants was killed. None was killed. So, bombarding Odi was to solve the problem but it never solved it. If the attack on Odi had solved the issue of militancy in the Niger Delta, the Yar’adua government, in which I had the privilege of being the Vice President, wouldn’t have come up with the amnesty programme.

So, that should tell you that the attack on Odi never solved the militancy problems. People will even tell you that rather it escalated it. It attracted international sympathy and we had lots of challenges after that attack on Odi.”

Implications of the face-off for 2015:

Obasanjo does not forgive. Obasanjo has always had the last laugh. These two expressions have become aphorisms in the Nigerian political circle because of some antecedents. 

Many politicians who attracted Obasanjo’s anger regretted it. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; former Ogun State Governor, Otunba Gbenga Daniel; former Speaker Umar Gha’li Na’Abbah, former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim; the late Senate President Pius Okadigbo, former PDP National Chairman, Chief Audu Ogbeh and even the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua were not spared. In different ways they disagreed with Obasanjo. In different ways they lost out.

As the political alignment for 2015 intensifies, there are fears that the Obasanjo group could pull the rug off Jonathan’s 2015 ambition. In Abeokuta last Friday, many governors from the North, some of whom have presidential ambition, engaged in a closed door meeting with Obasanjo after they contributed to the fund for building the presidential library mosque. If anything, the harmony demonstrated at the meeting pointed to the reality of power shift from the South to the North, a change that Obasanjo has openly canvassed for.

The big alliance being planned by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) would provide a veritable alternative to dissenting groups in the PDP, if Jonathan picks the party’s ticket for 2015 presidential election.

In his reaction to the face-off between Jonathan and Obasanjo, the National Publicity Secretary of the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP), Mr Osita Okechukwu, described it as ‘nemesis at work’.The divide between Jonathan and Obasanjo may influence the country’s future political leadership. An intense power struggle may be in the offing in 2015.

source:africansportlight.com

Displaced Aggression: Aftermath Of Boko Haram Attack On Police Anti- Robbery Squad Offices In Abuja PoliceMen Pounce On Journalist

Aftermath of the attack on the Police Anti- Robbery Squad Offices in Abuja Police Men Pounce on Journalists who dare to take pictures of the incident that occur on the early hour of Monday.

According to SaharaReporters an online media a photo journalist from Daily Independent newspaper who attempted to take a picture of the scene of the attack was severely beaten by the police and immediately arrested and detained.

Though it was reported that the attack was carried out by a group of well-armed gunmen on the Special Anti -Robbery Squad detention facility in Garki area 11 in Nigeria's federal capital Abuja.

The detention center used by the Nigerian police to hold high level violent criminals was attacked in a brazen manner by the attackers from the Boko Haram sect. The center reportedly holds some senior commanders of Boko Haram including the wife of the Kabiru Sokoto, the Christmas day Catholic Church bomber in Suleja, Niger State.

Police spokespersons did not respond to calls regarding the attack. SaharaReporters learnt the police authorities are too embarrassed to discuss the attempted jailbreak barely twenty four hours after the sect attacked a military church near Kaduna killing at least 10 people including military officers.

The area has since been cordoned off by Plain clothed policemen.

More report coming up.