Senate
yesterday endorsed move by its Committee on Federal Character, to carry out
thorough investigation on alleged lopsided recruitment exercise recently
carried out by the Department of State Service.
The
committee Chairman, Senator Tijjani Abubakar Kaura (APC, Zamfara North), had,
during plenary, declared that his committee, based on petitions received from
some concerned Nigerians on recent recruitment exercise by the DSS, resolved to
probe the exercise considered to be highly lopsided in favour of a particular
state and section of the country.
Accordingly,
the Senate President Bukola Saraki, in his response to Kaura’s submission, gave
the committee the go-ahead with the probe and update the Senate with its
findings.
“Your
committee should please go ahead with the planned investigation on the alleged
lopsided recruitment in DSS to right whatever wrongs that must have been
committed in the general interest of all Nigerians”, he said.
Reports
from the alleged lopsided exercise carried out by the agency last month,
revealed wide disparity in state by state allocation of the 479 newly
commissioned cadet officers.
While
the Director-General of the agency, Lawal Daura, ensured that at least five
cadets were recruited from each state of the federation and the FCT, the scale
was ‘heavily’ tipped in favour of some states in the North, regarding other
extraneous considerations.
Specifically,
only the minimum of five cadets stipulated per state finally entered the
Service from Akwa Ibom, Nigeria’s largest oil producing state, while a whopping
51 found their way in from Katsina state, the home state of President Muhammadu
Buhari and the Director-General of the DSS, Mr. Lawal Daura.
Furthermore,
the two most populous states in Nigeria, Kano and Lagos, were given 25 and
seven, respectively, indicating that the recruitment was not based on the
population of states.
A
breakdown of the newly commissioned cadet officers on geo-political basis
revealed that 165 are from the North-west, roughly four times as many as those
who were picked from the South-south, 42.
The
figures for the other zones are North-east, 100; North-central, 66; South-west
57 and South-east, 44.
Going
by the report therefore, while 331 of the newly commissioned officers were from
the 19 Northern states and the FCT, less than half of the total intakes were
from the Southern part of the country
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