There is no federal character in DSS recruitment since 2012 – Shettima

The Acting Chairman of the Federal Character Commission, Abba Shettima in an interview with PUNCH on recruitment scandals in government agencies and efforts to nip it in the bud, disclosed that there's no federal character in DSS since 2012.

"Recruitment, whether in the DSS, the military, the police or any other organisation of government, must basically comply with the provisions of the Federal Character Act. Section 14:3 and 4 of the constitution are very clear, and it has no exception either in the executive, judiciary or the legislature. Any government agency that decides to recruit must comply with the Federal Character protocol.

"The recruitment exercises carried out by the DSS in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 were without recourse to the Federal Character Commission, despite the fact that we used to write them on each occasion to demand details.

"The trend in certain MDAs now is that they have  violated the law by recruiting more workers than they needed just to ensure compliance with the principles of the federal character and to address lopsidedness in their recruitment.

"We have written the DSS to get their nominal roll and up till now, they have not complied. Unless we look at their nominal roll and ascertain their recruitment on state by state basis, to see whether certain states are grossly under-represented, not represented or over-represented, we will not clearly come out and say what they have done is lopsided. So, that was why we wrote to them. We cannot know if it is lopsided (without nominal roll) or that they recruited more in Katsina than in any other state.

"So, in the event that we discover that it is not a corrective measure, we will issue the appropriate sanctions."

Culled from The PUNCH