The All Progressives Congress has called for the resignation of the Interior Minister, Abba Moro over the death of 16 job seekers at its recent recruitment exercise held in several states of the Federation.
In a statement issued by the Interim National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said that a job emergency may need to be declared by the government.
“Despite huge yearly budgets rolled out since 1999, the PDP-led federal government has failed to create jobs for our teeming youth, and the number of those who are jobless has now reached such an alarming rate that a job emergency may have to be declared to avert an impending cataclysm.
“Massive mindless looting of the public treasury has seen funds that could have been used to create millions of jobs end up in the deep pockets of corrupt government and PDP officials, without any consequence for the thieves, while the incompetent federal government led by a clueless President continues to deceive the public with cooked figures showing job creation where indeed there have been job losses,.
“Today, sadly, the truth has been laid bare: 5,000 or so vacancies declared by NIS have attracted over six million applicants, from which over half a million was shortlisted, according to published reports, and the desperation of our youth to eke out a decent living has been exploited by a villainous government that forced each applicant to cough out 1,000 Naira, thus raking in 6 billion Naira from jobless people,’’ the party said.
“Is it true that the Minister directly presided over the recruitment and money-making venture? Could this have been part of the government’s fund-raising measures for the 2015 elections? Why will a government seek to profit from a malaise it created by charging hapless job seekers 1,000 Naira each? Why were a huge number of applicants invited for only 5,000 jobs or less? Why was such a shoddy arrangement made for the test when so many people were invited? Could the test not have been done in batches to avoid a stampede? How much indeed was realised from this glaring extortion of job seekers? What happened to the money? These are some of the questions begging for answers.
“An investigation into the needless deaths of our youth, under a government that has failed them in every respect, must seek to answer those questions and recommend ways to avoid a recurrence. At least if a government cannot create jobs, it must neither profit from its incompetence nor send the victims of its ineptitude to their early graves,” APC said.
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