Recruitment scandal rocks NSCDC •6,000 employed without adverts

Strong indications emerged on Friday that the leadership of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps was involved in covert recruitment exercise that was mired in controversy.

SATURDAY PUNCH investigations showed that the recruitment process involved school certificate holders, who were employed into the service.

It was gathered that about 6,000 people had been recruited so far into the NSCDC since the exercise commenced last June.

Investigations showed that the Commandant-General of the NSCDC, Dr. Ade Abolurin, who authorised the exercise, had called the latest recruitment as a ‘replacement exercise.’

However, the exercise may have drawn the ire of some members of the public and officials of the NSCDC, who are appalled at the style of recruitment.

It was gathered that most of those benefitting from the exercise were those who obtained letters from the high and the mighty in the society.

The leadership of the NSCDC was said to be giving special preference to those who tendered letters from members of the National Assembly, ministers, special advisers and other government officials.

In July, desperate job seekers in Abuja and some states made frantic efforts to pressurise relatives to help secure letters from lawmakers, ministers and senior aides in the government as a way of getting the NSCDC job.

Investigations showed that the beneficiaries of the current exercise were given employment without a critical look at the age factor.

It was learnt that the rush to please people in government culminated in a situation where many of those employed as recruits appeared rather too old for the job.

Another issue said to be causing disenchantment in the NSCDC is the training pattern adopted by the CG.

It was gathered that the newly recruited personnel were asked to go to their respective states to collect their letters of employment and were trained and also posted to work within the state.

The general feeling in the paramilitary outfit is that recruits were supposed to be centrally trained and posted to all parts of the country.

It was learnt that as a fallout of the recruitment that was carried out without advertisement in the media, 90 letters of employment were returned to the National Headquarters of the NSCDC in Abuja from Imo State.

Officials of the NSCDC who were sent to dispatch the letters had to return them to the national headquarters when the supposed recruits did not turn up to claim the letters.

Also, some personnel of the organisation, who arrived in Abuja from some states, were said to have been sent back to the states.

However, our correspondents gathered that the NSCDC was looking forward to embarking on a more elaborate recruitment in September.

It was gathered that the exercise, where about 12,000 are expected to be recruited into the paramilitary outfit, would involve both graduates and non-graduates.

The NSCDC Public Relations Officer, Emmanuel Okey, defended the exercise, which he said was meant to replace retired and dead personnel, as well as those that had left the corps.

Okey stated that the NSCDC had the mandate to recruit junior officers between level 1 and 7 without recourse to the Prisons, Immigration Civil Defence Management Board, which is in charge of recruitment in all paramilitary agencies in the country.

He said, “We are not recruiting new personnel; what we are doing is replacing retired and dead officers with our volunteers. It is an internal exercise and we have the mandate to do so.”