Job Racketeering: CSO Calls For Prosecution Of FCC Staff

A civil society organisation, the Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has called on the nation’s anti-corruption agencies to investigate allegations of corrupt practices bothering on job racketeering by some staff and management of the Federal Character Commission (FCC).

 The group’s chairman, Mr. Debo Adeniran, who made the call stated that it had been established that “it is now a norm to sell employment slots, promote mediocrity, employ those with god-fathers and perpetually keep the children of the poor in the unemployment web.”

He cited the ongoing investigative hearing by the House of Representatives Ad-hoc committee investigating federal ministries, departments and agencies, parastatals and tertiary institutions on mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the allegation by Mr. Haruna Kolo, an ex-aide to the chairperson of the FCC, Ms. Muheeba Dankaka, who confessed to selling federal employment slots to job seekers on the directives of his former boss.

Adeniran affirmed that the humongous amount of money being demanded by the racketeering syndicates domiciled in all federal, state, and even local government services would further impoverish the children of the poor and their parents who have invested a lot on their education.

The anti-graft organisation chairman asserted that, “We would have called for total scrapping of the commission but considering the strategic and critical role of FCC operations in the country, we are seriously concerned about the enormity of corruption going on in the administration and operations of the Commission, therefore, we would like to commend the House of Representatives for carrying out this investigative hearing, we would also call on the federal government to quickly wade into the Commission’s administration with a view to sanitizing it.

“We would recommend immediate suspension of the chair of the commission and bringing all those responsible for these shameful and despicable acts to book. This is not the time for Anti-graft agencies to slumber; they should rather swing into action and prosecute all those that have been fingered in this revelation so as to serve as a deterrent.

‘’More importantly, we hope the allegations will not be swept under the carpet and that the House of Representatives ad hoc Committee should also beam its searchlights on all other MDAs of government,” he stated.