Legislative Aides In Employment, Admission Rackets – TheNigerialawyer

Legislative aides working with senators and members of the House
of Representatives are allegedly involved in employment
racketeering going on in ministries, departments and agencies
(MDAs) of government in Nigeria, New
Telegraph report.^[1]

Investigations carried out by New Telegraph on the allegation,
also exclusively revealed that the legislative aides are deeply
involved in admission rackets into various tertiary institutions in
the country.

An insider at the National Assembly told our correspondent, on
the condition of anonymity, that some of the legislative aides used
to forge the signatures of their principals to execute the
fraud.

According to the source, the aides use letterheads of their
principals to issue letters of recommendation to applicants looking
for jobs in MDAs, where the applicants were usually considered for
the jobs, having been assumed to have been recommended by the
lawmakers whose names appeared on the letterheads.

The source further revealed that the National Assembly political
staff also used to apply the same technique to give recommendation
letters to heads of various tertiary institutions of higher
learning, to offer admission to persons looking for admission from
such institutions.

The source said that the legislative aides whom he knew to have
successfully engaged in such rackets collected reasonable sums of
money from the prospective beneficiaries.

It further disclosed that the amount usually collected from the
job or admission seekers by the aides varied, depending on the
classification of employment being sought or the course of study
applied for by candidates.

According to the source, those seeking employment in highly
lucrative and competitive organisations in Nigeria were usually
made to pay higher prices than those going for establishments
considered less lucrative.

For instance, the source said that applicants looking for jobs
in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Federal
Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and
other choice places, used to pay very high amounts of money to the
racketeers.

For admission racket, applicants seeking admission to study
Medicine, Law and Engineering, were usually asked to pay higher
than their counterparts seeking admission to study arts or
humanities.

It was, however, learnt that in some cases, the applicants were
usually made to pay in two instalments; the first payment was
usually made when the letter of recommendation was issued while the
last tranche of the payment was usually made after the applicant
received appointment letter.

New Telegraph further learnt that in the event that the
employment did not materialize, the applicant was the one to bear
the loss, as the aide would not refund the affected applicant the
money he/she paid, and the victim would not make trouble.

The source said: “I am surprised if you are just hearing or
knowing about this now. This practice has been on almost as old as
this National Assembly itself, which came into existence in 1999,
when Nigeria returned to democratic rule.

“But I can tell you that this racket became more rampant when
employers of labour started making recommendation letter a
condition before they can offer employment to qualified
Nigerians.

“The legislative aides you are talking about are into these
rackets because they are part of the Nigerian corrupt system. They
are born and brought up in the corrupt culture; so you don’t expect
them to behave differently from the general attitudinal culture of
the country.”

Another source, corroborating the reality of this forgery cum
racketeering scam going on unchecked in the National Assembly,
however, noted that some lawmakers had discovered in the past that
their signatures were criminally used by their aides to get jobs or
admissions for people.

According to the source, some of the lawmakers discovered when
the heads of the establishments for employment or schools for
admission, called the senator or the member, whose name was used,
to authenticate the genuineness or otherwise of the recommendation
letter.

The source cited a case of a lawmaker from Taraba State (name
withheld), in the Seventh assembly, whose legislative aide
massively used his letterheads with his forged signature to get
jobs for people in choice establishments.

He said: “It is true that some of the hardened political staff
forge the signatures of their bosses to transact all manner of
fraudulent businesses in this National Assembly. And I don’t blame
them because there is a saying that if you can’t beat them you join
them.

“I want to state that the practice is not a new thing, and I can
say that our system encourages that, and it is getting worse by the
day.”

A member of the National Assembly Legislative Aides Forum
(NASLAF), who also preferred to speak on the condition of
anonymity, confirmed the practice, disclosing however, that the
lawmakers and MDAs had devised measures to frustrate the fraud.

He said: “It is a fraudulent exercise that has been going on.
That’s why the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) doesn’t
give letter of appointment of legislative aides to them
directly.

“They first of all have to confirm from the senators or from the
Reps, to ensure that the recommendation letter is from the lawmaker
in question, and when they want to issue the letter, they send it
directly to the lawmaker and not the person recommended for
recruitment.

“Most establishments don’t honour letters saying “I am directed”
unless those directly from the office of the President of the
Senate or the Speaker, and there is a confirmation that the
appropriate authority issued the letter of recommendation.”

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