N-Power: How and why Northern candidates are victimized

Ordinarily, the news report on the front page of the Daily Trust of Wednesday, March 1st, 2017, with its eye-catching title, “FG hires 350,000 more graduates for N-Power”, would have been a news worth celebrating, by all qualified but unemployed graduates throughout the country. But, alas, so far, the negative lapses and shortcomings recorded since the take-off of this laudable, well-conceived and well-motivated social intervention program, belies its lofty objective, especially for many poor candidates, particularly those from the rural North, who have no godfathers to defend them and are usually neglected by their officials and exposed to all the dirty tricks and predatory manipulations ,in the hands of official touts, during the so called screening and selection sessions.

I want to repeat my previous appeals to the Northern governors and their state officials to be more patriotic like their southern counterparts and more proactive and pay special attention to this recruitment exercise, and several others such as enlistments into the various ministries.

It will expose the systematic but prolonged and dubious lopsidedness and cheating against the North. The current FCT N-Power list, dominated by Southeast indigenes would vindicate my assertions. The Northern governors must wake up to their responsibilities or will forever be held responsible for allowing their slots to be traded-off and sold to mercenaries from other parts of the country.

Abdulkarim M. Abdullahi, Keffi, Nasarawa State.