It is traditional for a political party that wins elections and assumes power to provide sinecures of jobs for the boys or stalwarts who are too junior to be appointed to cabinet rank positions. These get to be appointed as chairmen or directors of the boards of government agencies and corporations. With the hashtag, #CBNILLEGALHIRES, whistle-blowers allege that the Central Bank of Nigeria surreptitiously gave jobs to literal real boys, young children and wards, of senior government officials.
Reports, yet to be denied, indicate that persons recruited for jobs that were not advertised as required by statutes, included a niece of President Muhammadu Buhari, and sons of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, presidential friend Mamman Daura, Minister of Interior Abdurahman Dambazzau, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, and Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase.
The CBN must be helping the All Progressives Congress settle some political IoUs, and further entrench Nigeria’s commonwealth in hands of the powerful through their heirs and assignees. This manner of recruitment cannot justifiably be regarded as a perk of office of politicians, and it contradicts President Buhari’s preference for doing things above board.
Cynics suggest this is Scene Two of the script that secured elective offices for the children, wards, protégés, or proxies of senior members of some political parties, before, and during, the 2015 general election. The CBN is merely ensuring equal time for those who didn’t play in the election sweep stakes.
The CBN policy on recruitment says: “All appointments shall be made on the basis of merit, through a fair and open selection process.” And, “The principles underlying the recruitment process are… fairness, credibility, equal employment opportunities, merit, and optimisation of career prospects for currently employed staff.”
The core disciplines for employment at the CBN are: Accountancy; Banking and Finance; Business Administration; Economics; Sociology; Statistics; Computer Science; and Law.” Of course, those who will be recruited for non-core banking jobs, like corporate affairs, secretarial, clerical, security, and janitorial services, need not possess these qualifications.
But no one is telling the positions and the qualifications of the beneficiaries of the clandestine recruitments, except for the diversionary copout by Isaac Okorafor, the CBN’s Acting Director of Corporate Communications. He asks no one in particular: “Is there any qualified Nigerian who does not have the right to work in the CBN?”
Okorafor claims the CBN did nothing illegal in secretly hiring those rookies: “What the law says is that if we are going for that kind of recruitment (what kind of recruitment?), we should apply for a waiver (from the Federal Character Commission), so that we can do targeted recruitment.” Did they apply? His ace: “There are states that are not well-represented (in the CBN), and… we focus on those states to recruit people of certain classes… to cover the shortfall in those states.”
Even then, it should still have been publicly announced so that indigenes of those states that possess equal or better qualifications can have a go at the jobs. But no, plum jobs must be taken to pampered children of the mighty, the same way driving licences are taken to their wards and girlfriends.
Contrast that to the noisy fanfare about the 10,000 jobs the Nigeria Police is offering the wards of those on Poor Street. Those who will take the poorly paid police jobs, for which more than 100,000 have already applied, will be condemned to stand in the sun to control vehicular traffic, confront armed robbers, carry the handbags of governors’ wives, or wipe the dirt off the shoes of vain ministers.
Okorafor’s argument makes you wonder if those kids who landed the CBN jobs have the requisite academic qualifications and experience. If they lack the requisite qualifications, then you can look forward to a future CBN that is reeking in mediocrity, when its present crop of leadership would have retired.
You certainly cannot expect much from individuals with degrees in exotic disciplines like fisheries, biochemistry, languages, and anthropology, trying too hard to understand the arcane intricacies of finance, banking, and accounting. Attempts to “panel beat” these poor lads to forcibly acquire the skills that will enable them to formulate appropriate monetarist policies for the nation with the largest economy in Africa may not be quite easy.
Arguments that they could be trained on the job, the same way the late Gamaliel Onosode, who studied Classics, and excelled in finance, was trained, are probably outmoded.The times are different. There was a dearth of academically qualified graduates in any field in those early days. So, anyone that was available was “knocked into shape” to fit the jobs on hand.
Protagonists of this school of thought could point to the late Babatunde Jose who never studied journalism in a university, but remains the doyen of Nigerian journalism. And of course, there is nothing wrong in those who feel so inclined to change their professions, or aspire to work in professions for which they did not have any formal training.
But why would you bypass those who took the trouble to acquire requisite academic qualifications, to employ absolute rookies who will require a longer period of training? What the CBN has done can only be described as a betrayal of public trust, lack of fidelity, and outright corruption.
If those kids were qualified for the jobs, they should have faced the mandatory open interview. What would the parents of the poor applicants who died at the Abuja National Stadium while attending the Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment test on March 14, 2014 now think? Clearly, those applicants died because they were not from privileged homes.
Of a truth, nothing is intrinsically wrong or indecent in the children of government officials getting jobs– through due process, if they are qualified. But if such unfair tackles occur under the watch of an administration that rode into power with the promise to change the way things are done, much is left to be desired. This cancerous ethos that the Igbo call “ima madu,” man-knows-man, subverts the spirit of due process.
The opaque manner of the recruitments is worse than the pernicious quota system, catchment area, and federal character doctrines that are, at least, openly supported by the Nigerian constitution. It defeats the doctrine that guarantees equality to all, and equity, which makes up for deficits, to the disadvantaged. This stealth employment further skews advantages to those who already have a surfeit of advantages.
The unpatriotic attempt by the CBN to force rookies on Nigerians may compel you to think that (probably) racist Bill O’Rielly, who queries (probably) undiscerning American presidential aspirant, Donald Trump’s intention to provide high-tech jobs for (probably) uneducated African-Americans, (probably) had good intentions after all.
O’Rielly asks Trump: How are you going to give high-tech jobs to people who are ill-educated, aren’t qualified, and have tattoos on their foreheads? A parallel to this is to ask why the CBN will give jobs to kids with ill-fitting qualifications, and daily engage in juvenile pastimes of sticking expired chewing gums to their palms.
In this season of rerun elections, the CBN may consider it apposite to throw open the vacancies, to allow those “lucky” kids slug it out with their unlucky contemporaries in a fair game, so that only the best (from the disadvantaged catchment areas) emerge.
PUNCH
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