The minister of interior, Abba Morro has expressed surprise in the tragic way the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment turned out on Saturday, March 15, 2014 in various centres across the country, given that proper arrangements were made and logistics put in place.
He said the number of people that showed up for the test were far more than the number that registered.
Over 15 job seekers lost their lives in stampedes that occurred in Abuja, Port Harcourt and Edo states, and many others sustained injuries.
Moro blames the stampede on already employed people that stormed the test centres with hopes to get foreign postings with NIS and pensions at the end of their career. He says most of these employed people didn’t even register for the recruitment exercise.
The minister speaking through an aide, Mallam Salisu Dantata Muhammed, said proper logistics were put in place to contain.
He also blamed social media for the crowd that turned up, saying applicants sent out broadcast messages to their friends via Facebook, Twitter and sms.
Read what he said below:
“It’s odd that many of those who turned up included employed bankers, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, teachers and others who wanted to cross over to the Immigration Services at all costs.
“The Minister and officials of his ministry considered last Saturday’s incident as very regrettable, more so as the unexpected huge crowd shattered the near perfect arrangements they had put in place against anticipated huge crowd.
“The Interior Ministry made adequate provisions for the expected mammoth crowd at the National Stadium meant to conveniently sit 75,000 people. More than 45 percent of those who eventually turned up were not supposed to be at the centres.
“About 520,000 applied for the recruitment exercise across the federation. For instance, we had in our record that applicants totalling 68,000 were to be at the Abuja Stadium. But at the end, nearly 70 percent of non-applicants forced their way into the stadium.
“Apart from the committees that planned the exercise ahead, we had security personnel drawn from the Immigration, Civil Defence, Prisons, Fire Services and others to complement the Police. We made adequate preparations.
“But they overpowered the security personnel. Many of them got impatient and very desperate to get attention, and in the process, they began to climb and jump across impossible places in order to gain access to the stadium. That was the beginning of the stampede.
“The crowd got more desperate when they learnt that they could get foreign service postings and then become pensionable. So doctors, nurses, teachers, engineer, and all manners of people who had paid jobs turned up and increased our dilemma.”
