Feelers have emerged of how the Presidency purportedly hijacked the recent recruitment exercise into the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, with over 160 of the 200 applicants who eventually got employed influenced by officials at the Presidency.
Out of the 50,000 online applications received, only 5,000 were invited to write the aptitude test after which 200 of the applicants were penciled for employment, sources at the NPA told Vanguard.
It was revealed that after 160 slots were ceded to the Presidency, the remaining balance of 40 new recruits were left to the management of the NPA, the Ministry of Transport and the National Assembly to give to whoever they choose.
According to an insider at the NPA, while the management was taking the invited applicants through the recruitment exercise, some of those well connected among them kept bringing notes and letters from the Presidency, a development that changed the course of the entire exercise.
There are doubts about whether the principle of Federal Character Commission was adhered to in the course of the recruitment exercise.
The aptitude tests were said to have been written in the six geopolitical zones so as to avoid a repeat of the ugly outcome of the last recruitment exercise carried out by the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, last year.
Meanwhile in a sharp reaction, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Maritime matters, Leke Oyewole, denied the involvement of the Presidency in the recruitment exercise asserting that “the current Managing Director of the authority is not a man you can push around, he has a mind of his own.
“The Managing Director that I know is a man that cannot be coaxed into such unwholesome arrangement,” he said.
Oyewole who confirmed the fact that the Presidency was aware of the exercise, added that influencing the employment of certain people will be a disservice to other Nigerians. “Nobody in the Presidency can be part of an unholy arrangement against Nigerians, not the office of Chief of Staff nor any other office at the Presidency will be involved in such a thing,” he said.
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