Alleged recruitment bribery: Reps probe Federal Civil Service Commission

By Okey Ndiribe & Emman Ovuakporie

ABUJA—The House of Representatives has concluded plans to probe the Federal Civil Service Commission, FCSC, over alleged bribe taking from job seekers into the federal civil service.

The Green  chamber of the National Assembly late last year passed a resolution mandating its Joint Committee on Public Service Matters, Employment, Labour and Productivity, Anti-Corruption, National Ethics and Values to investigate the allegations.

Chairman, House Committee on Public Service Matters, Andrew Uchendu, PDP/Rivers, who disclosed this at the weekend, said that already, members of the Joint Committee had held preliminary meetings and decided to invite memoranda from the MDAs and Federal Civil Service Commission on the issue.

*National Assembly building

He explained that the committee had requested the MDAs to send to it memoranda on all the recruitments they had undertaken between 2007 and 2012 as well as the procedures they adopted in these exercises.

He said: “A number of Nigerians have written petitions complaining that they have been shortchanged in various recruitment exercises into the public service.

“We want to take a second look at some of our key policies such as federal character, quota system and zoning because experience has shown that they have become indirect ways of enthroning mediocrity in the polity.”

“We think that it is time for Nigeria to go back and enthrone meritocracy in the conduct of all our affairs, particularly in the civil service which is the engine room of governance.”

It would be recalled that recruitment into some paramilitary bodies late last year was smeared by allegations of bribery that even led to the sacking of Comptroler General of Immigrations by the Federal Government.