A civic group, Citizens of Impact (CI), has urged the Federal Government
to immediately reverse the recent secret and dubious recruitment made by
the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Federal Inland Revenue Service
(FIRS). CI threatened to stage mass action should the government fail to
heed its demand.
The group made the call on Monday at a press conference in Abuja,
Nigeria’s capital. Speaking to reporters, CI’s leader, Daniel Seun
Olatunde, asked President Muhammadu Buhari to break his loud silence and
investigate the misdemeanor committed by the Governor of the Central Bank
of Nigeria and the head of FIRS, adding that the officials deserved to be
sanctioned.
According to the group, the executive chairman of FIRS, Mr. Babatunde
Fowler, reportedly recruited about 400 staffers related to his cronies as
well as relatives of other government officials. A relative of Senator
John Enoh, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, was one of those
who received one of the highly desirable jobs.
Mr. Daniel alleged that Mr. Fowler had already carried out this secret
recruitment before his agency invited Nigerians to apply for the jobs. The
CI spokesman accused Mr. Fowler of perjuring himself before the Senate and
telling barefaced lies to Nigerians, misleading job seekers to apply for
jobs that had been handed out to the relatives of privileged Nigerians.
The group also remarked that the CBN secretly recruited 909 staffers
between June 2014 and February 2015 in violation of due process and
federal character principles. “CBN opted for a secret process of hiring
new staff in the past two years because the bank was doing ‘targeted
recruitment,’” said Mr. Daniel. He added, “It is obvious the CBN’s target
were the children and relatives of the rich and powerful as the list of
the new hires reads like a ‘who’s who in Nigeria.’”
CI queried why there was no public advertisement of the vacancies, noting
that several weeks after media reports of the scandalous practice, the
government continued to maintain a loud silence. Mr. David stated that the
bank’s illegal recruitment had not been condemned, reversed or
investigated.
The group declared that it would mobilize all Nigerians across the country
to protest the injustice going on the country if the government failed to
take urgent action to reverse the untoward recruitments.