The acting director of Corporate Communications of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Isaac Okorafor has tried to explain the nepotism scandal around the secret recruitment of the wards of chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
This week, citizen reporters website, Sahara Reporters had revealed the list of relatives of top government officials beginning from President Muhammadu Buhari.
On the list are a son of Mamman Daura, a cousin to President Buhari, a son of the Petroleum Minister of State, Emmanuel Kachikwu, a son of former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, a daughter of Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, a son of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Abdurahman Danbazzau, and other top government officials. The list contains 91 names.
The scandal has rocked the nation because it shows that the Buhari administration is entrenching nepotism in the institutions of government.
Okorafor, on Wednesday, March 16, 2016 issued a statement defending the questionable recruitments and described the exercise as “nothing illegal” as there was nothing wrong with recruiting without advertising the vacancies.
He said: “In the last two years, we have had cause to recruit specialists, and what the law says is that if we are going for that kind of recruitment we should apply for waiver, so that we can do targeted recruitment.
Okorafor said the bank obtained waiver from the Federal Character Commission to ignore the requirement for spread across the federation. The current list is dominated by people from the Northern part of Nigeria.
“The other issue is that there are states that are not well represented (in the CBN), and in this case we focus on those states to recruit people of certain classes that we used to cover the shortfall in those states,” he said.
Nigerians have questioned these secret recruitments and demand to know the qualification of the recruits and some Nigerians were irked by the appearance of a Northern domination in the list.
