NNPC’s fraudulent recruitment

In November 2010, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation launched a nationwide recruitment exercise for graduate trainees and experienced personnel. The recruitment drive which was managed by a prominent consulting firm based in Lagos was the corporation’s second exercise in a period of three years, and had over a million applicants from within and outside the country.

On Saturday, March 26, 2011, all the applicants took part in a compulsory job aptitude test that was conducted simultaneously in all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. A few months later, about 5,000 of the applicants who had passed the aptitude test were invited for an interview at the Amphitheatre, NNPC Towers, Central Business District, Abuja.

The interview exercise successfully held during the months of June, July and August 2011, and all the interviewees were promised reimbursement of expenses incurred on travel, hotel accommodation and presentation materials. To aid this payment, the consulting firm collected the bank details of all the interviewees who kept their appointments.

It is well over a year since the interviews took place and not a single person who participated in the exercise has been contacted by either the NNPC or its consultants. Instead, the two organisations have recently begun a new recruitment drive that is completely the same in scope with the former exercise. Already, over a million persons have submitted their online application, and thousands more are sure to beat the deadline.

Even though the previous exercise has not been concluded, the NNPC has released several millions of Naira to its HR Department, and its consultants, to enable them conduct a successful recruitment campaign. Nobody has said anything as regards the overwhelming millions of public Naira spent on the last recruitment, why the interviewees are yet to receive a dime, and why the result of the interviews is been held back.

A few months ago, an employee of the consulting firm, responding to a applicant’s allegation on the NNPC Nigeria Facebook page that it had been instructed to commence payment to interviewees and that DHL, its courier service provider, had begun the delivery of appointment letters, said that it is not true. According to him, a top official of NNPC has for unknown reasons failed to release funds for reimbursement and has held on to the results of the interviews. The man’s reaction prompted some fans of the page to suggest that, like the case of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency recruitment, some politicians might have hijacked the recruitment exercise as a scheme to reward party members, cronies and supporters.

Is it possible that some persons at the helm of affairs at the NNPC are using these recruitment exercises to enrich themselves? Is it possible that the millions of unemployed Nigerian youths are used merely as means to line the pockets of a privileged few? Nigerians deserve answers to these posers.

by: Matthew Obeke

my people, what do you think?