THAT ABBA MORO AND HIS CO-CONSPIRATORS MAY FACE PROSECUTION : Prosecute [not just Sack] Abba Moro For Recruitment Tragedy, By Jiti Ogunye ... PremiumTimes

On Saturday, 15th of March, 2014, the ides of March, the Ministry of Internal Affairs ( Interior),  Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), and the public officers responsible for the Ministry and NIS, principally Abba Moro, the Interior Minister  and David Parradang, the Comptroller General of Immigrations jointly and severally killed, at least  twenty (20) people, across the country during a job recruitment exercise conducted  by the Nigeria Immigration Service in stadia across the Country.

The facts and circumstances of the tragic incident, and the fact that it was not unprecedented make these public officers and the Federal Government of Nigeria not only liable for the civil wrong that had been done to the deceased and their bereaved families but also culpable in criminal law for the unlawful killing of the deceased. Apart from, and in addition to being sacked, these public officers, ” and others at large” must be prosecuted.

Minister Abba Moro and his Ministry and Comptroller-General of Immigrations David Parrradang and the Department of Immigrations invited these Nigerians who died and the traumatized others, who are living, to apply for employment. We have been told that over 520,000 applicants applied for the under 4,556 job vacancies.
When the number of applicants hit 4,000, 40,000 or 100,000, the Ministry and Immigrations Department did not turn back subsequent applicants. They kept taking applications from job seekers who were made to pay for seeking jobs that were not available. Why? The Ministry and Immigrations were engaged in another illicit act  of raking in ” internally generated revenue”, to be stolen as the “recruitment exercise administrative  costs “. Corruption was, thus, the motivation and driver of this recruitment fraud.
Remember, the police recruitment scratch card, online application recruitment scam  of the past. Recall the Imo State Governor, Ohiakim  similar employment scam of the past. The Joint Admission Matriculation Board  (JAMB) is also on board of this illicit  public fleece, dubiously selling online forms to candidates or victims, if you will, to apply for admission into tertiary institutions, far in excess of admission capacity of the tertiary institutions. The money realized  is called internally generated revenue, which these institutions, that are fed and sustained by “external” statutory votes and budgetary allocations, have wide latitude to steal.
These innocent Nigerians were scammed (and now some of them have been murdered) to apply for jobs that were  not available. Not only because the number of applicants far outstripped advertised vacancies, but also because the publicly advertised vacancies would have been  privately filled, anyway, before the public charade,  by vested interests, who have turned public service into a fiefdoms of unbridled nepotism and mediocrity.
When these murderers got over 520,000 applicants in their hands for  less than 4,556 available jobs, they had ample time to embark on arbitrary screening; for example, prune down the number of ” successful applicants to be shortlisted for interview” to say a manageable level of 40,000 applicants, in order to ensure that the applicants did not mass up at the stadia. They did not do so. Why? Simulations and pretences are the hallmark of fraudsters. They wanted to give the fraudulent impression that the exercise was open, transparent and credible.
When they invited these applicants, these murderers knew the number of those expected to congregate at each of these venues of tragedy. Did they prepare for them? Were paramedics there on standby? Did they prepare for crowd control? No. And to think that these are the institutions in charge of our borders in Nigeria. Porous thinking, negligent reasoning equals porous borders. Our borders, we can now see, are not porous because of the vast  land. They are porous because of vacuous and arid mind.
Two years ago, an avoidable disaster like this one almost occurred. And the Ministry of Interior and Immigrations who are now the undertakers who have interred these unemployment victims and forced them to embark on an irreversible emigrations out of country and out of life, were very much in the system, then. So, calamity like this had almost occurred before. Did Abba Moro and his co-agents of death do everything, or even anything, in their power to avert this disaster? No.
And so, we declare that the Minister and the Comptroller General of Immigrations, with others now at large, co-conspirators, accessory to, and accessory after the fact of obtaining property under false pretences; and murder ( or manslaughter )/ culpable homicide ( or involuntary homicide  are culpable. They are criminally liable, and must be brought to justice.
Section 419 of the Criminal Code Act, Cap C38, Vol. 4 LFN, 2004.) defines the offence of obtaining goods by false pretences. Section 419 A defines the offence of obtaining credit by false pretences or other fraud. It provides that ” (1) any person who by any false pretence or by any means of any other fraud obtains credit for himself or any other person (a) in  incurring any debt or liability: or by  means of an entry in  a debtor and creditor account between the person giving and the person receiving credit, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for three years; (2) the offender cannot be arrested without  warrant unless found committing the offence”.
 Is it not glaring that we have a 419 Case here? When a Minister, Ministry and their Department of Immigrations extorted application  fees from over 500,000 unemployed Nigerians, when only about 4,000 jobs were “available”, ( and not actually available, for, as argued above, these vacancies would have been secretly filled), can we not see another variant of Advance Fee Fraud here?
Also, under our criminal laws, criminal negligence can be prosecuted. “It is the duty of every person who has in his charge or under his control anything whether living or inanimate, and whether moving or stationary, of such a nature that, if the absence of care or precaution in its use or management, the life, safety or health of any person may be endangered, to use reasonable care and take reasonable precautions to avoid such danger; and he is held to have caused any consequences which result to the life or health of any person by reason of any omission to perform that duty.” ( See Sections 304 of the Criminal Code Act, Cap C38, Vol. 4 LFN, 2004.  ” When  a person undertakes to do any act, the omission to do which is or may be dangerous to human life or health, it is his duty to do that act; and he is held to have caused any consequences which may result to the life or health of any person by reason of any omission to perform that duty” ( See Section 305 of the Criminal Code Act)
“A person who unlawfully kills another in such circumstances as not to constitute murder is guilty of manslaughter ; and “any person who commits the offence of manslaughter, is liable to imprisonment for life”‘ ( See Sections 317 and 325 of the Criminal Code Act)
The Minister and his subordinates were in charge of the immigration recruitment exercise and, in particular, in charge of the public venues where the selection and interview charade took place on Saturday, 15th of March. In Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, applicants, far in  excess of a 60,000 capacity National Stadium, were said to have been invited to the venue of the mass slaughter. The Minister and his subordinates owed the dead applicants a duty of care. They breached that duty of care. And they must be held responsible in civil actions ( unlawful killing, breach of fundamental right to life), and in a criminal charge  for the resultant damage ( injury) and deaths.
So, sue them. Let them be investigated, charged to court, and punished. And as an interim measure of penitence, let the Federal Government of Nigeria compel the Ministry and Immigrations to be disgorged of that illicit over Five Hundred Million Naira, and let that money be shareed amongst the families and next of kin of  our martyrs of the raging war for  survival in Nigeria, the departed victims of one more catastrophic evidence of a fast failing State.
This is the only sensible way to deal with the Abba Moro Massacre.
Mr. Ogunye, social justice advocate, attorney at law, and Premium Times Legal Adviser writes from Lagos.