NIS Recruitment: EFCC Quizzes Former CG Over Missing N600 million

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC on Monday quizzed past Comptroller General of the NIS, Mr. David Paradang ,over alleged collection of N555 million from applicants who participated in the 2014 Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise.

Paradang was grilled for seven hours as EFCC reopened investigations into the recruitment tragedy in 2014, which led to the death of 19 young job seekers,

Investigation revealed that NIS under Paradang only declared N45m as the money collected while actually the amount collected from the applicants was about N600 million.

It was also learnt that EFCC might invite the immediate past Minister of Interior, Mr. Abba Moro, and other top officials of the interior ministry in relation with the issue.

Before the May 15, 2014 tragedy, a recruitment committee headed by S.D Tapgun, the Director/Secretary of the board, had recommended that the recruitment exercise be shifted to either the last weekend in March or second week in April, 2014 for proper arrangement to be made.

The recruitment committee also proposed that N5m should be budgeted for hiring of ambulances and buying of water. At its last meeting held on March 7, 2014, the committee raised a memo to Moro on its recommendations, but the memo was ignored. The 16 members of the committee were drawn from the CDFIPB, NIS, Ministry of Interior, and Drexel Tech Nigeria Limited, which managed the online portal for the recruitment exercise. Though each applicant paid N1000 for the online registration, no money was released to the recruitment committee by the Interior ministry.

The committee met with officials of Drexel Tech Nigeria Limited and asked the firm to provide funds for the recruitment because there was no provision for the exercise in the 2014 budget. The firm released N45m on March 12 to enable the aptitude test to hold as scheduled.

Following the recruitment tragedy, former President Goodluck Jonathan directed the ministry to refund the N1,000 to the applicants, but the directive was not carried out by the ministry.

The career of Parradang ended on August 21, 2015 when he was suspended by the Federal Government for illegally recruiting 1,600 personnel into the service in May, 2015 without the approval of the Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prisons Services Board, which has the statutory power to recruit.

He was said to have recruited 700 Assistant Inspectors of Immigration and 900 Immigration Assistants III, towards the end of Jonathan’s tenure.

He was subsequently replaced by Martin Abeshi by President Muhammadu Buhari a week later. Though the Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, visited the Presidential Villa to plead with Buhari, the sacking of the suspended CG indicated that the visit was not successful.