Opinion: A closer look at FG’s response to the NIS recruitment tragedy

By Tola Abraham

Abuja NIS venue

Despair. That’s the stomach churning feeling you get when you hear terrible news. Despondency, anguish and misery are other appropriate words. When you hear of young men and women being trampled to death under the soles of their compatriots, it sucks the hope out of you like a vacuum connected to your innards.

If your imagination is vivid and automatically stimulated, you immediately imagine the scene, the screams, and the horror. If you are obligatorily empathic, you put yourself under the shoes- the tennis shoes, the ’Nikes’ and the boots. You feel them on your back and in your eyes, in your crotch and on your knees. You realize you are dying but you wonder what will kill you- would it be the feet cracking your skull or the bodies falling on you and trapping the air in your lungs.You start to shout and that’s the last mistake you will ever make.

Okay. You are reading this so clearly you didn’t die, you probably weren’t even there, but you are saddened and heartbroken and you demand redress. This is the beauty of democracy, average citizens publicly airing their displeasure and the government responding ‘swiftly’.
Without attempting to speak for most people, it clear that the varying reactions by the different arms of the Nigerian government so far, fall short of the ideals of democracy and are therefore unsatisfactory. At the risk of sounding like a typical badbelle Nigerian who never sees anything right in the actions of those in power, I am going to explain my continued discontent.

A proper place to begin will be to tackle the opposition. In a working democracy, the role of the opposition goes beyond shouting criticisms; it includes displaying alternatives and proffering solutions. There are several states run by opposition parties in this country yet all states have equally dire levels of unemployment and underemployment.

Since job creation is not only the business of the FG, states that are equally failing to provide jobs clearly lack the moral standing to criticize the Federal Government, which is actually the largest single creator of new jobs in the past four years. Yes, even the opportunistic babbling of the opposition did not appease us.

More disheartening is the response of the House of Assembly. The peculiar case of the Nigerian Legislature can be illustrated with the example of a certain businessman having two employees. The first earns eight million naira for every eighty thousand earned by the other but they somehow end up doing the same work. This example describes the ridiculous inefficiency displayed by the House of Assembly when it responds to multiple manslaughters by investigation.

Why on earth does the House have a committee carrying out investigations that should be carried out by purpose trained policemen and for much less? Why have they taken the jobs of the police and left their main duties of legislating unfulfilled? Investigations are necessary because they could result in justice for the deceased; however appropriate legislations which could prevent likely re-occurrences are equally important.

We need new laws. Urgently, quickly and with lightning speed. We need comprehensive laws regulating the practice of recruiting in Nigeria. A ready example of the content of such a law would be the criminalizing of ‘gate-crashing’ at interview venues. In spite of the abysmal organization of the tragic NIS interviews, the situation was made far worse by the several thousands of graduates who in spite of not being invited to the interviews, made their way there, violently and desperately.

The law should also proscribe the practice currently prevalent of employers inviting sometimes as high as fifty times more interviewees for the position needed. A situation where 90% of persons attending an interviewing have no chance of getting the job, means 90% of those people will have spent time, money and hope on very poor odds. Can you imagine being unemployed for over two years and part of that 90% forty times, How desperate will you be? Job seekers in Nigeria deserve better.

Reluctantly I write about the executive, as reluctantly as a teacher will speak against that nice student impeded by cognitive disabilities. The Federal Government’s attempt at ‘placating the mob’, is of the regretfully funny variety.

The basic rule of natural justice is a man should not be a judge in his own matter. This simply means that in any situation where one party is both the accused and the judge, what results cannot be called justice. Therefore, when through direct actions of the executive, young Nigerians die, how can anyone applaud the attempts of the same executive at adjudicating the matter?

Inherent in a democracy are checks and balances; executive corruption or negligence cannot be tamed by that same executive in a working democracy. If Mr. President wanted to resolve the issue speedily out of the respect for the deceased, the appropriate response will be admitting fault (civil responsibility) and then referring affected persons to the courts for identification and compensation. The courts are more equipped to determine what constitutes appropriate and sufficient compensation. The executive attempt is poorly thought out and has added more confusion to the system.

Fellow Nigerians, for the love of all that is sane, when did automatic employment become a method of compensation? We have gotten ourselves in these quagmires as a country, as a result of people being in public positions for reasons other than merit. This has to stop. Death of a family member is not enough reason to deny better qualified people the jobs they deserve. We cannot encourage excellence when our system does nothing to reward it. How can we encourage our children to be their academic bests when every other reason but merit is the criteria for employment?

More importantly, there are several principles guiding the award of damages/compensation in cases of wrongful death. There is no need to go into those kinds of details, I will just explain with certain examples. Imagine that one of the deceased was an only child; can employment given to three family members of that family have the same effect as another family with seven unemployed children? Imagine again that one of the deceased was educated up to PHD level and another was an SSCE holder, is justice served if both families get the same compensation?

There are many more questions the executive is not equipped to consider let alone answer. This is the job of the judiciary. However, the real culprit in all these, the agent of the state worth picketing is the Nigerian police. When citizens of a country die obviously non-natural deaths, it should go without saying that such deaths be investigated. Investigation should uncover cause and criminal responsibility.

Every individual whose act or negligence caused those deaths should be held accountable; everyone from the officer/consultant who planned an exercise with such soaring levels of disregard for public safety, to the officers who whipped people with belts allegedly setting off the stampede. This is why we have laws and a police force.

Democracy is beyond elections no matter how free and fair. It is a system with basic principles and specialized institutions. Demanding excellence and precision from our institutions is the only way to strengthen democracy. Our current political situation is in the truest sense the Kantian barbarism, worse, it is an elected barbarism. The ‘democracy’ of ants in a colony is ten times more admirable. This is the sad truth.

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Tola Abraham is a Nigerian lawyer, poet and fiction writer. She practices real estate Law in Abuja.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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