Topic: Abba Moro’s shed Crocodile Tears  (Read 2177 times)

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Abba Moro’s shed Crocodile Tears
« on: April 08, 2014, 09:36:42 AM »
In the typical style of the Nigerian public officer who, after tasting the lucre of public office, will not leave even if the heavens fall, disgraced minister for interior, Abba Moro, is not ready to quit, no matter what.

As Christians in the country were going to their different places of worship last Sunday, Abba Moro called a press conference in a bid to appease Nigerians and explain to them why he needs to keep his job following the deadly Nigeria Immigration recruitment exercise he midwifed which claimed as many as 20 vibrant Nigeria youths, most of them university graduates.

Apparently seeing the writing on the wall, the minister is fighting to save his job; nothing more matters to him. And he has a very funny reason to want to stay: his continued stay in office will help in unravelling what really happened during the recruitment exercise. Imagine!

What any man of integrity would have done, since there are questions about his motive, would have been to honourably resign so that there will be an unfettered  investigation into the actions, or inactions, of all those that played a role in the ill-fated March 15, 2014, NIS recruitment exercise.

But need we blame Moro for his latest insult on our collective intelligence? As I said earlier, people like Moro are mere opportunists thrown upon the system not on account of their competence, or what they can bring to the table, but at the instance of some godfather somewhere.

Contrary to what Nigerians would love to see of their nation, public officers like Moro do not see governance as a very serious endeavour whose primary goal is to uplift society. To his ilk, Nigeria is where anything goes, a loose system they can shake down to accumulate unearned millions. That how they like it. And fortunately for them, in a government led by President Goodluck Jonathan where, according to him ‘corruption is overblown in Nigeria’, it is only natural that Moro will exploit the weaknesses in our system to sit tight in office, even if doing so will send many more to an early grave.

Even the most forgiving of people know that the honourable thing for Moro to do was to quit after tendering an unreserved apology. But here we are, weeks after the disaster, what we continue getting served with by Moro and his cronies is a vexatious decoy aimed at nothing but keeping his plum job.

Moro’s tone does not even suggest he is remorseful a bit, with just a few lines in his statement dedicated to the families of the deceased. Even his ‘taking of the responsibility since the buck stops on his table’ is a qualified apology (even after irregularities unearthed about the contractor he single-handedly hired). The rest of Moro’s statement was targeted at the NIS boss Paradang. He could not understand how “anyone would want to betray his boss’ transparency.” What drivel!

Moro must be told that Nigerians are not asking for too much to forgive him.

He must explain in detail why he never advertised the consultancy job for the recruitment exercise, a simple step in public procurement. He must explain to the satisfaction of Nigerians why he surreptitiously engaged Drexel Nigeria Ltd even when it was obvious that the firm did not have the know-how and experience to handle such a job.

Moro must come clean on how much money accrued from this deal and the sharing formula – as simple as that. He must genuinely atone for his sins – and be seen to be doing that, and desist from further attempts to trade blames.

Moro cannot tell Nigerians that he wanted a fair and transparent exercise devoid of hijack by the high and mighty, hence the modus operandi chosen for the exercise. It is on record that this is not the first time Moro has been involved in such dirty deals: it took President Goodluck Jonathan to stop Moro and his cronies from a different company to halt the payment of N50,000 by companies with expatriate staff. That was a well packaged kill initiated by Moro until the president punctured it. So here, we are dealing with a serial ‘risk taker’. He must explain this, too.

Moro must be courageous enough to shed more light at how and where decisions to give the NIS board only N45 million a day to the exercise was reached. He must come with documents showing that what were done had the NIS board’s blessing – that he did not act alone, and why he thinks he is being betrayed.

Moro must also explain the adequate strategies and measures put in place to ensure hitch-free exercises across the centres where the tests were held. He must, for instance, explain to Nigerians why the gates of the Abuja National Stadium – the centre for applicants around the FCT, remained locked as a result of the non-payment of the usage facility fee till late that morning.

Again, as regards his talk of transparency, was it in the spirit of transparency that question papers were seen being tossed at candidates by Moro’s men at the National Stadium as we saw on television?

The Interior minister must explain to Nigerians if the N1,000 levied on applicants was part of the interior ministry’s 2013 or 2014 budget. Why did he not see wisdom in the suggestion to stagger the exercise because of the numbers – if not that doing such would cut down the profit margin? Many more questions are begging for true answers, not the long tales we have been hearing from him.

I am sure that even before Moro finishes giving his true testimony, in a serious country where rules are rules, he would be cooling his heels in Kirikiri. And in such climes, he would long have written his will – excluding his share of the recruitment loot – because he would be spending a long, long time there.

Source: Leadership

 

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