Immigration Recruitment Scam: Abba Moro Says No Refund Of Applicants Fee

The Minister of Interior, Mr Abba Moro, has said applicants aren’t guaranteed a refund of the fees they paid for the forms which led to a shoddy immigration test last month. Close to 20 persons lost their lives in stampedes at the various test grounds around the country. The Minister had accepted responsibility at a Senate hearing into the exercise. President Goodluck Jonathan had also ordered that the test be retaken. Several Nigerians had also called for the refund of the fees paid by job seekers. But Mr Abba Moro has said the N1000 fee received from each applicant was for the scratch card and that the sum (totalling N700m) went to the coffers of the consultancy firm hired to conduct the exercise and not the interior Ministry. He was replying to a letter from Lagos Lawyer, Femi Falana who had requested that the applicants get a refund after the exercise turned out a fiasco. Mr Moro’s letter was dated April 9. “I did not extort N700 million from helpless Nigerians who applied for employment in the ministry of interior, no recruitment fee was imposed on applicants. In order to achieve results, an online Portal (website) was emplaced, applicants were then required to access the portal through the purchase of N1000 scratch card,” he said. “For the records, neither I, not the ministry of interior, nor the Board of Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prisons Services nor the Nigeria Immigration Service, was involved in the purchase of the scratch cards to access the portal. In fact, the board and the tenders’ board of the ministry of interior had approved that none other than the consultant should be involved in the process of purchasing the scratch cards and the processing of applications”, Mr Moro said. Mr Falana had insisted that the Minister could not possibly wash his hands off the fee since he appointed the consultancy firm in the first place and was vicariously liable.