EFCC Grill Former Minister Abba Moro Over The Immigration Recruitment Tragedy

Abba Moro, former minister of interior, is being interrogated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over the recruitment tragedy that rocked the Nigeria Immigration Service in 2014.

Moro arrived the Abuja office of the anti-graft agency on Monday morning following an invitation to respond to allegations of fraud in the recruitment process which ended tragically with 16 deaths.

The recruitment test, written on March 15, 2014, attracted 6.5 million applicants, 700,772 of whom paid N1000 each as online registration fee. Only 4,000 vacancies were available.

Questions were raised over the N700 million generated by the consultant through online registration fee and why adequate measures were not taken to prevent overcrowding and stampede at the test centres. Moro initially blamed the applicants for being “disorderly”, but later took responsibility, expressing regrets that his desire to eliminate favouritism through a competitive recruitment process had ended in a tragedy.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan rejected calls to sack Moro but offered jobs to families of the victims close to the March 28, 2015 presidential election, which he lost. David Parradang was removed as comptroller-general of NIS by President Muhammadu Buhari in August. He was also quizzed in September by EFCC over the saga.