‘We only nullified questionable recruitment’
National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has denied sacking 48 members of its staff, saying the management only nullified a questionable recruitment that was marred by irregularities and lack of adherence to established procedures.
A section of the media had reported that the agency sacked 48 workers, one year after recruitment. But NEMA, in a statement yesterday, said those claimed to have been sacked were candidates of the spurious exercise.
The statement reads: “To set the records straight, approval was obtained from the NEMA Governing Council for recruitment in 2018. There are other complementary and critical procedures that were not followed, which effectively invalidated the exercise. These include obtaining approval from the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation with regard to established vacancies and manpower budget.
“The supervising ministry of NEMA, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, was also completely excluded from the recruitment. The standard protocol dictates that the ministry, which was created and assigned a supervisory role over the agency in 2019, must be briefed and involved in such exercises.”
On the allegation that salaries of the said candidates were unpaid for one year, NEMA pointed out that it does not pay salaries of public servants, adding that confirmation of recruitment and payment of salaries of a public servant on a continuous monthly basis follow established standards.
According to NEMA, Federal Government will neither enrol nor pay salaries of any candidates of a recruitment that failed to follow due process, as was the case in the said 2019 exercise.
“The roles of the Federal Character Commission (FCC), as stated in the publications, were intended to give credibility to the exercise. However, it must be noted that the participation of the FCC alone does not vitiate the responsibilities of the supervising ministry or the statutory roles of the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation – both of which were strangely excluded from participating in the recruitment exercise.
“The publications also claimed credit for involvement of the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN) in the recruitment exercise. However, the involvement of the institute is not a necessary condition in the recruitment process as enshrined in the Public Service Rules (PSR),” the statement further read.
