by Ikemesit Effiong

The sheer audacity of the contractor at the time to make a population equivalent to a quarter of all of Lagos, sit for a 35 minute exam at the same time, in poorly regulated exam centres across the country would astound even the most fervent government supporter.

On the morning of March 15, 2014, my brother and I embarked on the 40 odd minute long commute from our home in Utako, Abuja to the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport, a somewhat bland, if familiar ritual for me as it was going to be my third trip out of town in as many weeks.

Using the usual route of turning off the Nnamdi Azikiwe expressway – an inner city which connects Maitama district with the Area 1/Durumi/Apo axis without the hideous experience of going through the city centre – at the National Stadium exit, we hit a snag.

For what seemed like at least 3km, from Wuye up to the stadium itself and stretching as far as the Olympic Village roundabout, the expressway itself was lined with vehicles of all makes, models and sizes and a horde of people in various states of dress, but who all seemed to be wearing sporting footwear.

There was no major football match scheduled for the day, even if there was, not that early in the morning and certainly the security authorities would not allow vehicles park on one of Abuja’s main thoroughfares. On an inquiry with my driver and a few bystanders, the reason for the unusual congregation of humanity became clear – there was a government recruitment exercise going on.

Our driver had to turn back and use a much longer route through the Utako-Jabi-Jahi bypass, before we reconnected with the airport expressway (it is officially known as the Umaru Yar’adua expressway, but no Abuja resident calls it that). We barely made our flight and I recall making an idle post on Twitter.

I was slow to realise that the scene I had just witnessed would turn out to produce one of the biggest stories of Nigeria’s 2014. As a key member of YNaija’s political team at the time, little did I know that I would spend the rest of the year following what appeared as a minor travel inconvenience at the time.

Scrolling through my social media feed at the Murtala Muhammed arrival wing in Lagos, I was astounded at the sheer chaos that was unfolding back in Abuja. It was clear from any casual observer of the way proceedings evolved at the scene that a public safety issue was of some concern.

The media would later report that what became the #NISStampede on social media involved about 6.5 million Nigerians applying for 4,000 vacancies in the Immigration Service. In Abuja alone, the number of applicants who showed up that day was estimated at about 68,000 – more than the stadium’s stated 60,000 capacity.

The sheer audacity of the contractor at the time to make a population equivalent to a quarter of all of Lagos, sit for a 35 minute exam at the same time, in poorly regulated exam centres across the country would astound even the most fervent government supporter.

But certainly, no one expected that people would lose their lives trying to partake in an exercise which held the hope of dramatically altering their lives – with the offer of a job. Alas, it did alter the lives of everyone involved and the nation. But not in the way anyone imagines.

In Port Harcourt, scores of persons were injured when at least 20,000 applicants tried to force their way into the 15,000-capacity Liberation Stadium. Most of them ended up at the Military Hospital, located along the Aba-Port Harcourt Road. By the end of the day, five of them would be dead.

In Benin, a pregnant women slumped and died inside the Samuel Ogbemudia stadium when at least 28,000 people showed up at 6am for a screening exercise which couldn’t start till about 2:15pm.

When immigration officials in charge of the screening lost control of the crowd, prompting the soldiers on guard to start shooting sporadically into the air, all hell broke loose – applicants scrammed for safety and the rest made for a sad and sobering historical footnote.

Kano, which saw 18,000 people showed up for the exam and Makurdi, where 17,800 people attended the exercise had their own crowd management meltdown – there were no casualties in Makurdi but one live was lost in Kano. Three persons lost their lives when the Women Day Secondary School in Minna proved unable to cater for the 11,000 people who crammed into its premises. There was one more casualty in Jigawa.

The story of how 18 people lost their lives across six Nigerian states in one of the most grossly unorganised public events organised in recent Nigerian history went on to capture the imagination of an entire country.

The pictures, on television and especially on social media of people – young and old, male and female, desperate and in agony – trying to escape unconscionably crammed public places; the lucky ones lying on the tarmac after fleeing overflowing stadiums, struggling for air; others showing the world through the lenses of their phone cameras the injuries they sustained trying to leave these ghost arenas as they became in the national psyche. Enough is Enough Nigeria went as far as to call it a murder.

In the wake of this unfolding tragedy, this like all Nigerian tragedies, acquired a distinct and abrasive political colour.

Outraged Nigerians demanded accountability and the government struggled to allocate responsibility for the mess. Abba Moro, an otherwise anonymous and uninteresting government minister who barely made it to the pages of the national media had an unwelcome spotlight shone on his actions – or more appropriately his inactions.

The government’s doggedness to defend Mr Moro, and his tasteless and some say, malicious comments in the days after that tragedy only inflamed the sense of injustice Nigerians felt had been meted out on the families of those souls. Even the Peoples Democratic Party was “shocked and deeply saddened” enough to call for a formal investigation.

It took an overwhelming public condemnation of Aso Rock’s characteristically lethargic response to national emergencies to get President Goodluck Jonathan to visit the seriously injured at Abuja’s flagship National Hospital, promising to provide the victims’ families with monetary compensation and job offers.

It took almost a year to the day, and the stratospheric pressure of winning re-election, for the President to offered 35 job vacancies and N75 million to 15 families.

A year on and it seems like the events of March 15, 2014 never happened. Mr Moro kept his day job; the official investigation, using that tired Nigerian parlance, into the ‘immediate and remote causes’ of this tragedy was buried in legislative intransigence – the Senate ensuring that politics trumped moral responsibility ; no one either at the Immigration Service or the Interior Ministry has been fired; the contractor, Drexel Global Tech, went on to organise recruitment exercises for the Army, Navy and Police in 2014 and still has a contract with the interior ministry, ensuring that the jolly business of Nigerian officialdom, with its sinister profiteering off the public purse, keeps humming nicely.

This week’s message from the EiE Nigeria mailing list provides a searing indictment on that dark day in March 2014 – “Nigerians lives matter… We will NOT forget!” it triumphantly pronounced. But as we would find out almost a month to the day, 219 lives will be ruthlessly unshackled from their families in Chibok, Borno by the nation’s number one enemy.

And we know that how that story has gone.