Secret Recruitments: Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Too? -By Dayo Williams

Babatunde Fowler

All state institutions funded by taxpayers’ money ordinarily should make their job recruitment processes open to every qualified Nigerian, regardless of his or her status, nationality, religion or what have you. They are supposed to be equal opportunity employers. Like what happens in the private sector. Or are our public institutions the preserves of the political elite and their cronies?

But when state-run institutions begin to recruit staff into their ranks under the cover of darkness, then it should be a source of grave concern to every rational being. It is an unpardonable gaffe in the civil service system and the condoning government should be held responsible for this.

You wonder why organisations in the private sector thrive better than our public institutions. It starts from the recruitment of their human resources, because that is all that really matters. They try to hire the best, mostly on the basis of merit. Of course, some back door recruitments will surely come through the ‘man-know-man’ syndrome, but this usually constitutes a minority.

The other day, the Central Bank of Nigeria, under Governor Godwin Emefiele, conducted its own secret recruitment, and it was the sons and daughters of those close to those in the government of President Muhammadu Buhari who made the list, including the daughter of the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase. Some Buhari’s associates’ children also made the golden list, thus shutting out qualified sons and daughters of the poor who made his victory at the 2015 polls possible.

Some of us cried openly, wrote open letters to the president, appealing for the process be stopped and re-started all over again, and generally thrown open to the public. Our cries and pleas fell on deaf ears. Till present, the presidency has not responded to queries on the illicit recruitment. Those kids of the elite are working comfortably in the offices of the CBN today. Yet, when it is election time, the political elite would want the commoners to file out again under the sun and in the rain to vote for them. A day of reckoning beckons soon.

Of course, those eternal rationalisers of every government policy came out in their tens and twenties claiming the CBN recruitment had been concluded in the days before Buhari’s election and coming to power. That was what they sold into national consciousness. I did not buy it. I responded that the president ought to cancel such privileged recruitments. At last, it stayed, and the president goofed. Big time, too. That is a big minus for a government that came into Aso Villa on the mantra of change. A question then is: what has changed? Only the characters in government. The processes remain significantly the same.

Now Babatunde Fowler is claimed to have carried out such clandestine employments in FIRS too, importing the culture of secret recruitments he practised in Lagos State’s Internal Revenue Service into FIRS. He might possibly get away with these since the president allowed that of the CBN to stay. A precedence of impunity has already been established in this regard, which would likely apply to his own case too.

The new FIRS recruitment is said to have been conducted with the utmost disregard for openness and competitive processes, while being shrouded in secrecy, ably oiled and facilitated by political patronage. A beneficiary and someone who assisted in the clandestine recruitment confided in me, but demanded I did not put out their names in the public domain. They are covered by the blood of anonymity!

Getting political appointments via political patronage is normal in a democracy, but recruiting people, permanent staff into agencies of government on the basis of the same patronage is antithetical to the mutual inclusiveness and the growth of a nation. It excludes the majority from having a sense of belonging.

Even if those secretly recruited were the best in the country, which can never be, and could not have been, it defeats the creed of transparency and accountability the government of President Buhari preaches. Pray, why should the business of governance be conducted via secret arrangements?

The president will do his government of change a lot of good if he can put a stop to the secret recruitments in the Fowler-led FIRS. If he allows it to stay, that is another dent to his government. And some of us will use it against him at the appropriate time. No amount of rationalisation will justify these undemocratic and unjust processes.

I can hazard the usual line of defence, soon to pop up from the usual quarters – the pro-establishment sympathisers: all relevant and concerned agencies gave FIRS the green light to conduct the secret recruitment. It’s going to come out soon, but then some of us will not relent in our advocacy and activism for openness in the conduct of government affairs.

The people knew there were openings that needed to be filled in FIRS. Fowler made this known openly when he assumed the mantle of leadership of the agency, but when it was time to recruit, he seems to have gone solo in recruiting those whose folks are likely to be in government or who know someone in government. This must not stand. It should not stand. It cannot stand.

Dayo Williams, a political commentator, wrote in from Abuja.