Since last Saturday, when the Nigeria Immigration recruitment exercise produced deaths instead of jobs, the authorities—the minister of Interior, Abba Moro, President Goodluck Jonathan and their party, the PDP—have voiced out their usually pre-scripted responses to such avoidable tragedies. These days, they are no longer “on top of the situation”, but have invented other vocabularies such, ‘the unfortunate incidents’, ‘sorry’, ‘culprits will face the music’, ‘queries will be issued’, etc. Truth is Nigerians are tired of such “banal phrases”. As Ross Perot, former American presidential aspirant, said; why set up a committee on snakes when you can easily kill them”? Any matter the government wants swept under the carpet is always referred to a committee.
Lives have been lost due to some people’s carelessness, inefficiency and mercenary approach to anything government. Is it so difficult to fish out these people and fire them, starting from Minister Abba Moro. These people do not value human lives, so why spear them the ignominy of a sack? What then will serve as a deterrent?
The story making the rounds was that the minister, the Senate president’s relations and their Idoma confraternity were more interested in the billions of naira that accrued to them from the sales of forms than the safety of candidates. Who does not know that to put together thousands of people in one place, even in a stadium, without thoroughfares is recipe for stampede? This is a simple Safety lesson 1-0-1?
The turn-out of unemployed youth for the immigration jobs is a clear testimony to the dreadful unemployment situation in the country, contrary to what President Jonathan, the minister of finance, Dr Okonjo Iweala and the ruling party want to us to believe. Now, the wind has blown and we have all seen the rump of the fowl!
