RECRUITMENT: EFCC Fingered In Corrupt Practices, Nepotism; Shuns Fed. Character, Loads Commission With 75% Northerners

Nigeria's foremost anticorruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, the EFCC may have been fingered in corrupt practice as it allegedly shunned the norm of federal character in it recent recruitment of officers, News Punch has learned reliably.

The commission reportedly pushed aside the Fed­eral Character principle in its ongoing recruitment of vari­ous cadres of operatives.

According to The Authority Newspaper, the EFCC recruitment exercise is heavily tilted in favour of the North - to the detriment of other geo-political zones in the country.

An appraisal of the classi­fications and names of the re­cruits placed on the anti-graft agency’s website shows that contrary to the recommenda­tions of the committee set up on the recruitment, the EF­CC’s management went ahead to make its recruitment domi­nantly from the North.

Our source discovered that about 75 percent of the shortlisted can­didates are mainly from the northern part of the country.

The development has forced stakeholders from other parts of Nigeria to appeal to the Na­tional Assembly and the Federal Character Commission (FCC) to wade into the matter so that the EFCC could be national in its workforce.

They said that the injection of fresh 750 staff members to an already lopsided commission would be a huge minus to the agency which was primarily set up to fight corruption, but which has consistently exhibited lopsid­edness in the employment of its personnel.

Apart from the fact that 75 percent of the shortlisted can­didates are from the North, it was discovered that several of such candidates bore the same family names.

It was learnt that the Hu­man Resources Department of the EFCC is being tele-guid­ed by a cabal which has become entrenched in the commission and had severally frustrated the implementation of the Federal Character principle in the agen­cy’s employment processes.

In a petition it sent to the Federal Character Commission (FCC) a group, the Good Gov­ernance and Anti-Corruption Mandate, said that the non-inclu­sion of states of origin and the ge­opolitical zones of the shortlist­ed candidates published by the EFCC was designed to cover up the shoddy deal.

The publication on the EF­CC’s website, apart from con­firming the lopsidedness in the recruitment, also exposed the non-compliance with recruit­ment parameters set earlier in July this year by the EFCC Re­cruitment Committee headed by the Secretary of the Commis­sion, Mr. Emmanuel Adegboye­ga Aremo (SAN).

The committee had recom­mended that the new set of per­sonnel from the Superintendent Cadre (graduate cadre) should not exceed five persons from any of the states which had dominat­ed others in the nominal roll list­ing.

It said that 750 new person­nel comprising 300 Detective As­sistants (candidates with SSCE); 300 Detective Inspectors (candi­dates with OND/NCE) and 150 Detective Superintendents (can­didates with HND or university degrees) should be recruited.

But it was observed that the final round of the recruitment exercise holding at the Nigeri­an Air Force (NAF) Base Hospi­tal, Mando, Kaduna, falls short of merit, federal character, equi­ty, balance, good conscience and fair judgment.
However, the Head of the Media Unit of the EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, stoutly de­fended the actions so far taken by the agency.

He insisted that the reporter could not have run into conclusions with a list that did not contain the states of ori­gin of the applicants.

He said: “You have right­ly observed that the list did not contain the states of origin of the applicants. How then can you conclude that a section of the country or a particular state was favoured? That is part of the Yel­low Journalism which you peo­ple practice.”

When Uwujaren was pressed further to justify the non-inclu­sion of the states of origin of the applicants, he simply said it was not in breach of any law and cut off the telephone call, after rain­ing abuses on the reporter.

Inves­tigations by our source showed that instead of keeping to the recommendation of the Aremo Committee which had recommended that refer­ences be made to existing staff to ensure that the states and local governments that are less repre­sented in the EFCC are beefed up in tune with the principle of Fed­eral Character, the powers that be removed state and local govern­ment of origin of the shortlisted candidates to cover up their du­bious acts.

It was further discovered that after the written examination, at which it was decided that 50 can­didates should each be shortlist­ed from the states with less repre­sentation and 20 from the states with high number of operatives, states like Adamawa, Benue, Kogi, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Gombe, Bauchi, Borno, Yobe, Sokoto and Zamfara, with high number of staff, still dominated the published list of 4,542 candi­dates.

Another curious observation was that people with similar sur­names featured so much in a long sequence on the list, lending cre­dence to alleged primordial con­siderations.

It was gathered that the Fed­eral Character Commission was not consulted nor due process followed in the exercise. Sadly, candidates with scores as low as 20 marks were shortlisted while candidates with up to 60 marks from the South East or South-South geopolitical zones were dropped.

For instance, in the short­listed candidates for the 150 va­cancies declared for the rank of Detective Superintendent (DS), 2,673 candidates were shortlisted.

Similarly, for selecting 300 of­ficers into the rank of Detective Inspectors, 524 were shortlisted. When tongues began to wag on the parameters used for arriving at the DS list, the EFCC pulled down the original list from its website.

Aside from this, inside sourc­es said that some states had over 500 of the 4,542 shortlisted can­didates, while states from the South East and South-South had as low as four candidates which was why the states of origin of the candidates were expunged.

According to the Good Governance and Anti-Corrup­tion Mandate, which is insisting on transparency, “even the pro­cess of choosing the corruption fighters is corrupt in itself. Feder­al Character was equally not ob­served in the published list”.

The group therefore, urged President Muhammadu Buha­ri to intervene and ensure that “the original examination sheets and the marking scheme be re­viewed by an independent body comprising men and women of integrity to ensure that only can­didates who passed well get con­sideration from their states, as against what is being done by the EFCC”.

When contacted on the de­velopment, the Head, Public Af­fairs and Communications of the Federal Character Commis­sion (FCC), Mr. Idris Idris, con­firmed that several people have written petitions to the FCC - but said that he was not aware of the one by the Good Govern­ance and Anti-Corruption Man­date against the EFCC’s recruit­ment exercise.