Published 5th Apr, 2022

By Yakubu Mohammed

Thousands of youths seeking jobs in the 16 local government areas of Taraba State have been extorted by the state’s civil service commission.

The commission, despite having some budgetary funds allocated to it for recruitment purposes, still finds it pleasing to extort job seekers by selling forms to them, a source who asked not to be named, said.

“In February this year, the commission conducted a recruitment exercise where application forms were sold for N3000,” he said, noting that a lot of people applied.

However, John Mamman, the commission’s chairman, announced via Taraba Television on April 2 that only1,825 out of approximately 10,000 applicants would be recruited, according to our source.

Sadly, the commission said it would start employment with 160 applicants among the 1,825 successful ones. But the youths are not sure if there will be continued after the first set of applicants were engaged on Monday.

ONE APPLICANT PER POLITICAL WARD

“Every local government has 10 wards and we have 16 local governments in Taraba, which means they would be selecting one person from each ward, making 10 applicants from each local government area,” said our source.

An official of the commission who refused to disclose his name corroborated the source’s claims. He, however, declined comment on money paid to purchase the form.

“If you need explanations about this, you should come down to the commission,” he told our reporter.

FIJ learned that the employment scheme has been generating criticisms since 2017, when applicants alleged barefaced extortion by the government. Their grievances led to a protest in 2021.

Mamman, the chairman of the commission, repeatedly defended the sale of forms, saying it was constitutional. He blamed politicians for contracting youths to bastardise the commission’s efforts.

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