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Army Officials

07.04.2022 Featured REPORT: How DSS, Military Shortchanged the South During Recruitment Exercises

Published 7th Apr, 2022

By Tola Owoyele

The Department of State Services (DSS) has been accused of secretly engaging in a recruitment that not only directly contravenes Nigeria’s federal character principle, but also favours candidates or cadet trainees from the northeast and northwest.

In a March publication titled “Nigeria’s Security Recruitment: Ethnic Supremacy or Competence”, SBM Intelligence, an Africa-focused geopolitical research and strategic communications consulting firm, revealed that in 2020, the north had a massive share of the roughly 1,300 Nigerians who underwent cadet training at two different camps of the DSS in Lagos and Bauchi.

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“Of the total 628 cadet trainees who had resumed at the Bauchi facility as of September 23, 2020, 535 identified themselves as trainees joining the service from either the northeast or the northwest. Only 93 were from either the southeast, south-south, southwest or north central,” the report reads.

“The most damning of the revelations showed that at least 71 of those who underwent cadet training hailed from Bichi Local Government Area, Kano, the same local government area where the current director-general of the agency, Yusuf Magaji Bichi, hails from.”

The report also stressed that the process was not in accordance with the constitutional principle of federal character which demands equal share for all regions.

The lopsided 2020 recruitment was said to be the second of such since the Buhari administration came to power in 2015.

RECRUITMENT WITH SENTIMENTS

According to the report, a similar incident happened in 2017. In a statement released by an unnamed source of the federal government to select news media, the government rationalised its actions in 2017 by claiming that it deliberately employed fewer southerners to correct previous ‘inequity’ against the northern part of the country.

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While also citing other instances of lopsided recruitment processes in the Nigerian Army, Air Force and Navy in the report, SBM Intelligence stated that the Buhari administration has consistently shown little regard for the
country’s diversity, as many people, especially in southern Nigeria, agree with reports of bias during recruitment exercises.

“The distribution of opportunities has not only been abused in several sectors, it has also increasingly become a tool of controversy, division and
tension across all strata of national life,” SBM noted.

WHAT STATISTICS SAY

According to statistics from the SBM, of the 4,000 candidates shortlisted by the Nigerian Airforce in 2016, 761 were from the north central, the northeast had 632 and the northwest had 720. Five hundred and sixty candidates were from the southeast, 653 from the south-south, and 674 candidates came from the southwest.

In its 2017 recruitment through Direct Short Service Course (DSSC),
the Airforce shortlisted a total of 479 candidates. The breakdown
showed that 71 were from the north central, 100 from the northeast, and the northwest had 165 candidates. The southeast, south-south and southwest had 44, 42 and 57 candidates respectively.

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Between 2018 and 2019, data presented also showed that the north central, northwest and northeast had a higher number of shortlisted candidates when compared with their southern counterparts.

According to the report, the Nigerian Army, through its Regular Recruit Intake (RRI) and Direct Short Service Commission (DSSC), shortlisted a total of 44,054 and 1,136 candidates respectively.

However, out of the total number of candidates selected in RRI, 10,424
were from the north central, 9,000 from the northeast, and the northwest had 10,500. The southeast had the lowest with 2,142, while the south-south and southwest had 6,409 and 5,579 respectively.

For the DSSC, the northwest had 217 candidates, the north central had 206, northeast had 186, southeast 155, south-south 86, while southwest had 186.

Statistics from the navy also showed that the highest number of selected candidates were from the north.

THE DSS AGAIN

A critical look at the DSS recruitment process showed that while only the minimum of five cadets stipulated per state joined the service from Akwa Ibom, Nigeria’s largest oil producing state, 51 candidates from Katsina State, the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari and Lawal Musa Daura, a former Director-General of the SSS, made the list.

SBM Intelligence stated that the actions of the DSS and other security agencies are dangerous and antithetical to national cohesion.

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“The federal character principle Section 14 (3&4) of the 1999 constitution clearly states that recruitment into the public service must reflect federal character. For a country deeply divided by ethnicity and religion, conducting recruitment into government departments especially in a sensitive sector such as security, with bias, does a good job of fuelling distrust and fears of domination by one ethnic group,” said SBM.

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Published 7th Apr, 2022

By Tola Owoyele

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