The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has revealed that 1.5 million people applied for 5,000 available positions in the recent recruitment into the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
Aregbesola also disclosed that persons living with disabilities were among those who applied for the available positions in the Corps.
This is according to a statement on Wednesday by the minister’s media aide, Sola Fasure, Aregbesola made this known at the Policy Dialogue on Entrenching Transparency in Public Service Recruitment in Nigeria, organised by the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, an institution of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Relates Offences Commission in Abuja on Tuesday.
The former governor of Osun State said the recently concluded NSCDC exercise was one of the fairest and most transparent in recent history, despite the large number of applications received.
Aregbesola, however, noted that the ministry also received applications from applicants with merit from all parts of the country.
He said, “A woman came with her son after getting very high up people to influence his appointment. But we discovered that the son was far, far below the required height of 1.7 metres.
“Some applicants on wheelchairs also came, demanding the statutory five per cent allocation for special people.
“We politely explained to them that the job is paramilitary, requiring strenuous physical exercise for which they are not eligible, given their physical condition.
“One of the lessons we learnt, which we have always known anyway, is that there is no part of this country where we cannot get merit if we want the best.
“We got people from all parts of the country who are qualified, including females, as certified by the Federal Character Commission that was part of the process from the beginning to the end.”
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