ABUJA (Sundiata Post) – Exactly 363 days after 15 applicants lost their lives in the ill-fated recruitment exercise of the National Immigration Service (NIS), due to poor crowd control, President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday handed out a total of N75 million (N5m each to 15 families) as well as employment letters to 35 family members of those who lost their lives in the botched immigration recruitment exercise.
Jonathan had last year promised to employ three members each from the families of the deceased.
The President had also cancelled the exercise and set up a committee to conduct a new exercise.
Each of the families of the deceased, was handed a cheque of N5 million while three family members of each victim were given employment letters.
Speaking shortly after handing out the employment letters and cheques to the families of the deceased, Jonathan said the incident of the past would never repeat itself.
Jonathan, who described the day as a sad one, stated that though death was inevitable, the circumstances of one’s death mattered, promising that government would ensure that such an incident never happened again.
He explained that the delay in issuing out the employment as promised was due to the need to sort out some issues bothering on regulations in the ministries.
The President said the monies given to the families of the deceased should not be seen as compensation because it cannot replace the lives lost.
The Comptroller-General of the Immigration Service, David Paradang, said that out of the 45 candidates 10 had to be replaced because they did not meet the criteria of the service.
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He explained that some of them were shorter than required, overweight or over aged, adding that the families of the 10 have been asked to bring replacement for the slots.
The Immigration boss noted that some of them who are graduates were employed as Assistant Superintendent, those with National Certificate of Education (NCE) were employed as Assistant Inspectors while those with the West African school certificate (WASC) were employed as Immigration Officers 3.
The service has currently resumed the employment exercise. Paradang said the service intends to recruit a total of 2,000 officers less than the slated 45 slots.
Minister of Interior, Abba Moro said the government accepts the incident as an act that was not planned for.
He said those wounded in the exercise will not be forgotten adding that they will be included in the second phase recruitment which is ongoing till May.
