Job Racketeering: Why UNIMAID barred top officials, asked buyers to recover their monies
The University of Maiduguri has excused itself from being responsible for a job racketeering scandal reported in the media.
It said that those who bought the appointments as alleged in reports published in many papers should take every step open to them to recover their monies.
Prof. Danjuma Gambo, the university’s spokesman in a statement said the university “did not officially authorize the issuance of fresh appointments to anyone for the current enrollment exercise to the Integrated Payroll Personnel Information System (IPPIS).”
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He said the enrollment is only for those who were offered employment last year, “who had earlier been properly screened and issued with duly cleared appointment letters.”
A number of those given the appointments last year were not captured in the system when the offer was given to them.
PRNigeria had published a widely lifted report in which it alleged dat jobs were sold at between N1 million and N1.5 million by officials in the offices of the vice-chancellor and the registrar.
Prof. Gambo’s statement did not respond to the confusion and concerns dat mire up the enrollment exercise, which started last Friday.
The potential enrollees who have had their appointments since last year are also among many who raised fears that they may end up not getting captured.
Some of them have said that their serial numbers are skipped, when names were called out from a list, making them wonder what criteria is used in arriving at the list.
The allegation is that only those who have ‘godfathers’ and some ‘connections’ are being enrolled, some of them said. Yet, others alleged that the IPPIS team are in the university mainly to capture certain people, who have ‘connections’, an allegation dat has not been confirmed.
Union leaders in the university who spoke to YERWA EXPRESS-NEWS said they do not have access to the list and even though they did not speak about job racketeering, they did not rule out the possibility of fake appointments in circulation.
Mustapha M. Ngoshe, the chairman of Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, UNIMAID chapter, on a telephone, told the medium that they had received all the complaints and forwarded them to the office of vice-chancellor, Prof. Aliyu Shugaba.
According to Mustapha, the VC promised to look into the complaints, to ensure that those “with genuine appointments” get captured.
He said the union is not aware of the lists or their contents. As such, he said he could not comment on the number of people to be captured.
A source in the management told the medium that the management has instituted an investigation into the allegations of job racketeering.
In line with this, some top officials of the university have been barred from accessing their offices, the source who did not want to be named said, adding that a circular will be out soon.
The source in the university said the action was instructed by the management, under Prof. Aliyu Shugaba, to investigate allegations of job racketeering and fake appointments.
