The body was set up to fight nepotism and correct imbalances in representation of states in federal establishment but in a curious turn of events, its top management is accusing the body of promoting what it it should be fighting.

Employments into the federal services that include para-military organizations in the country are lopsided with some states fielding more candidates than others even when the federal character provides equal employment opportunities.
The Federal Character Commission is saddled with the responsibility of ensuring balanced employment opportunities for all states among others. But secretary of the commission, Professor F. A. Durosinmi-Etti lamented that even the commission has not been able to ensure the required balanced opportunity in its staff employment and among its contractors.

Prof Durosinmi-Etti who was responding to a petition written against him by some staff of the commission over alleged tenure elongation, over age and inability to successfully ensure balanced employment of Nigerians in the public sector, blamed the former chairman of the commission for abuse of federal character policy within the commission that made it difficult for the commission to ensure balanced employment in government.

“There is lopsidedness in Customs, there is in Immigration, in NDLEA, Civil Defence Corps, National Population Commission, in fact I will show you evidence of one of the latest. Now, put on record that I said that petition, those who wrote it are the accused themselves and I know who wrote it. Well, I have not seen it, I have not read it, but I know who wrote it and the man, say I claim he is being a rogue and that is the former chairman of this commission.

“The former one (former chairman of the commission) is the one that has caused all these wahala here. His name is Professor Abdulraheem Oba, former Vice Chancellor University of Ilorin. He has caused so much havoc in this commission that I cannot recover from it. In fact, up till now, he is owing the staff so much money, because he decided to post all our staff to various places without paying them according to civil service rules and we had the funds in our account at the time we decided we were posting them.

“I spoke with Madam Rose the head of Immigration (Comptroller General of Immigration), she said she was very ashamed of this commission because, we were supposed to be correcting imbalances here but this man will go and bring everybody from Ilorin, not even Kwara State, all of them from Ilorin. Our security, they are from Ilorin. Any contractor here, they are all from Ilorin. From our Internet to even those who painted this place, to even those who fumigated this place and everybody is Ilorin,” he said.

Staff of the commission who spoke on condition of anonymity said the commission has not been able to ensure balanced employment among states because most of the senior officers of the commission compromise by soliciting for employment for their candidates. They alleged that the inability of the commission to ensure balance in employment in government has led to lopsided recruitment in Immigration, Customs and the NDLEA recently. Effort to reach Prof Abdulraheem Oba for comment was not successful as his GSM line was not going.

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