GOVT.
IS CULPABLE
ERC
Demands Sack of Minister of Interior and NIS Comptroller General
Calls
for a Day of Mourning and Mass Protests
The Education Rights Campaign (ERC)
is outraged at the avoidable wastage of the lives of scores of unemployed
Nigerian youths during Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment test over the weekend.
The promising youths had gone for the test to seek means of keeping body and
soul together only for them to be forced into their early graves by the
irresponsibility and callousness of Nigerian government.
At some centres where the tests were
conducted, deaths and grievious injuries were recorded. Official sources have
explained this to be a product of the impatience of the candidates to gain
entry into the venues of the test. As usual victim-blaming and arms-wriggling
is the default response of the Federal Government to any national calamity
including those caused by its gross incompetence and the abject failure of its
policies and projects.
In Abuja and many other centres,
reports show that more applicants beyond what the centres could accomodate were
invited to write the tests. For instance at the Abuja National Stadium which
has a maximum seating capacity of 60,000, over 65,000 applicants were invited.
To make matters worse, only a few of the about 30 entry points into the stadium
were opened. The same stories exist in many other centres.
As far as we are concerned in the
ERC, the blame for the death rests primarily on the shoulders of the Federal
Government and particularly the Nigeria Immigration Service and the Ministry of
Interior which appear to have turned the recruitment test to an opportunity to
make quick money. According to reports, only 4,556 vacancies were advertised
but the NIS accepted application fee of N1,000 each from over 500,000
applicants making a clean return of over N500 million! This is unconscionable!
This is unacceptable!! The NIS and the President Jonathan's capitalist
government are preying on the misery of hapless Nigerian youths especially
graduates who suffer years without gainful employment.
The ERC believes it is the social
responsibility of the government as the custodian of society's commonwealth to
provide a decent job for every citizen. All talks about young graduates
becoming employers of labour is nonsense especially in a society where public
infrastructures like electricity supply, water supply and transportation
infrastructures needed to support self employment are lacking.
Actually, the crisis of chronic
unemployment which plagues the nation is a product of the inherent unjust
nature of the capitalist system which prioritises profit and privilege of a few
over people's needs. As a result of capitalism, Nigeria is locked in an absurd
contradiction of such magnitude that even the Finance Minister Okonjo Iweala
for all her famed qualifications as a foremost economist is left in a quandary.
It is not as if there are no jobs.
There are actually more potential skilled job opportunities than the current
number of unemployed graduates can fill. In the secondary and primary schools
for instance, over 200,000 skilled teachers are needed to close the yawning gap
in the teacher:pupil ratio. In the health sector, there are not enough doctors
and other health professionals. In the tertiary institutions, there is a
yawning need for more academic staff. We need more engineers and technicians to
be employed to drive the Nation's industrialisation, so also do we need
thousands of farmers, agricultural scientists, agronomists etc to drive the
much-needed agricultural revolution and food security. So there are jobs. The
fundamental cause of our predicament in this Nation is the contradiction of
capitalism, which prioritizes maximization of profits of few superrich against
welfare of the majority, coupled with legendary kleptocracy called governance
in Nigeria. This explains the refusal of the government to invest in turning
these potential job openings into actual jobs so that the army of unemployed
youths can apply for them.
This is why the ERC while staunchly
advocating the rights for free and public-funded public education never fails
to call for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by an
alternative socialist system as the only real way out of Nigeria's seemingly
insurmountable crisis. For as long as this unjust system of capitalism remains,
the kind of unconscionable wastage of the lives of our youths while hunting for
jobs which ordinarily is their right will continue to occur.
The public has been expressing
outrage at this mindless wastage of the lives of the youth of the Nation. We
now demand that this outrage be turned into a flood of mass indignation and
protest at an incompetent government and its unjust system of capitalism which
has caused this wastage of the lives of our youth. We specifically call on the
labour movement, civil society organizations and unemployed youths to organise
a day of National mourning and mass procession to protest and demand the
following:
(1) Immediate Sack of Minister of Interior Mr. Abba Moro and Comptroller
General of the Nigeria Immigration Service Mr. David Shikfu Parradang for gross
incompetence and complicity in the death of unemployed youths over the weekend
(2) Refund of the N1,000 application fee and other payments
to all applicants
(3) Provision of decent and well-paid jobs to all unemployed
youths commensurate to their qualifications and skills
(4) Payment of unemployment benefit to all those requiring
jobs but are not employed.
(5) Public ownership of the commanding heights of the
economy and their democratic management to ensure benefits for the mass majority
unlike presently when only a few actually benefits.
Hassan
Taiwo Soweto Michael Ogundele
National
Coordinator National Secretary
07033697259 07066249160 
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