The House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating employment racketeering by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System IPPIS yesterday interrogated the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Ishaq Oloyede for flouting the subsisting regulation on employment in the agency.
The committee had demanded that the agency immediately submit to it the list of all staff employed between 2015- 2023.
It condemned the lack of adherence to extant regulation of the nation’s public service as it was discovered that the board employed 300 staff from 2015 till date, without advertising.
Chairman of the ad hoc committee, Mr Yussuf Gagdi, said the agency shortchanged many Nigerians citizens according to their employment records.
He said that from the documents available to the probe panel, the examination body recruited staff without due process of advertisement, short listing and interviewing of job seekers.
The lawmaker and other committee members noted that the agency has so far relied on waivers for recruitment of staff without adhering to the provisions of the law on non engagement of more than 100 staff annually.
Gagdi further added that the examination body in 2021 had employed more than 300 staff at one recruitment excercise without adhering to the extant provision of law on the issue.
He argued that recruiting about 300 staff through waiver was against the federal character, adding that a waiver is to be granted only if an agency is collapsing.
“What makes you think advertising wouldn’t have been better? You have the capacity to screen the people that apply to get better hands to do those jobs. I’m asking this because we are most interested in correcting the fraud associated with waivers”.
In his defence, Oloyede said that the board followed the federal character principles in the job recruitment exercise it conducted from 2015 till date.
According to him, the board got a waiver from the relevant agencies to employ staff to replace those that had left, adding that the board had five sets of recruitment in the period under review.
On why JAMB sought for waiver to recruit over 300 people instead of advertising, he said it was due to exigencies of duty, saying they had about twelve to thirteen centres coming on board and needed people to man them.
“We used the waiver because we believe the exigency of the time and the nature of our work deserves it. If we are to advertise for the three hundred, we wouldn’t be able to meet up with what we needed them for.
“I believe very strongly that it was very necessary at that time that we recruited and I assure you that we did,” he said.
He further explained that the lopsided employment was necessitated by the need to fill vacancies in the over 40 offices in different states of the federation.
He also said most of the staff recruitment was done after consultation with state governors.
In spite of the registrar’s explanation, Gagdi ruled that the agency submit a state-by-state nominal roll of its staff recruited from 2015-2023.
