Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, yesterday blamed the social media for Saturday’s stampede during the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment.
Moro said applicants gate-crashed into venues of the recruitment exercise in huge numbers due to general perception that they would be pensionable and get foreign postings, if eventually employed.
One of the minister’s aides, Malam Salisu Dantata Muhammed, disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja.
He said it was odd that many of those who turned up included employed bankers, engineers, medical doctors and nurses, teachers and others, who he said, wanted to cross over to the Immigration services, at all costs.
Muhammed said the minister and officials of his ministry considered the incident very regrettable considering the near perfect arrangements they had put in place against anticipated huge crowd.
According to him, the many applicants who formally applied added to the problem by using facebook and text messages to invite friends and relations
who had no business being at the centers.
He said the ministry had made adequate provisions at the National Stadium to conveniently seat 75, 000 people.
He said: “About 520, 000 applied for the recruitment exercise across the federation. We had in our record that applicants totalling 68, 000 were to be at the Abuja Stadium, for instance. But at the end, nearly 70 per cent of non-applicants forced their ways into the stadium.