In an apparent subversion of the recruitment process into the Federal Inland Revenue Service, senators, ministers, members of the House of Representatives and others described as stakeholders submitted 524 names out of the 1,934 employed by the service since last year.
Reputed for her high principles, the chairman of the agency, Mrs. Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru, was said to have initially resisted the imposition of that huge number of job seekers on her, only to succumb later to the weight of persistent pressure from the top public office holders.
Consequently, the candidates of the public office holders got the jobs in one of the nation’s highest paying parastatals without fulfilling such formalities as entry tests or interviews.
A schedule indicating how the positions were to be shared described the 524 applicants as belonging to the ”stakeholders list.”
The FIRS boss, who secured autonomy for the agency a few years ago, following the National Assembly‘s passage of relevant bills, had always insisted that only the best hands would be employed in order to reform the service and raise its profile in terms of revenue collection.
A document our correspondent obtained gave the breakdown of external recruitment into the service as follows: Contract Staff, 45; those omitted from functional test, 5; Pool Staff, 19; and stakeholders list, 524.
”Internal recruitment,” which fell under the first batch, reserved 550 vacancies for ‘ automatic employment‘ while only 98 positions were advertised.
It was learnt that those on the ‘stakeholders list‘ bombarded the FIRS boss, a holder of First Class degree in Accounting from the University of Lagos, with applicants’ names because of the service’s newly improved remuneration package.
Besides, there is growing disenchantment among members of staff over the way the last promotion exercise was conducted in the FIRS.
Some of the workers complained that they were not being promoted as and when due.
