Adewale Sanyaolu
Ten months after the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) commenced a recruitment process to fill up various vacancies across different cadres in the Corporation, the fate of about 40,000 applicants who took part in the 2019 exercise remains unknown, Daily Sun investigations have revealed.
As part of its intake process, NNPC had opened a recruitment portal from March 13 to 26, 2019 (first stage) to enable eligible candidates to enroll. This was followed by the selection of 60,000 eligible candidates (second stage) who sat for the Computer Based Test (CBT) on June 1, 2019, across 50 centres in the country and the third stage of oral interviews which took place from July 1 to 6 2019 at the NNPC Towers in Abuja.
But since the completion of the oral interviews on July 6, it has been graveyard silence from the national oil company, with no form of official communication to the 40,000 applicants that took part in the oral interviews.
Some candidates, however, are airing their frustrations on social media, including tweeting to the official Twitter handle of the NNPC, to vent their anger and dismay over what they regard as an endless exercise.
“It’s imperative that you close out the 2019 recruitment process for Graduate Trainees and Experience Hire soon as you declared on the core values of TAPE. The World is watching. May posterity be kind to you,” a purported applicant with Twitter user ID @lzik013 had tweeted.
Another supposed applicant @Usouph155 wrote: “They really need to close out on it. It is six months already. We haven’t heard anything. We are ready to contribute our own quota to the development of and addition of values to Nigeria hydrocarbon reserves and to move Nigeria to a greater height.
“So we urge them to fast track the process and bring it to close. We find it hard to secure jobs after university.”
Femi Adeoye (@Kingsleyphemmy) tweeted: “We are still waiting for calls for appointment letters sequel to July interview. Should we keep our optimism?”
The situation was no different for Implement Brisin (@brisin_advocate), who wrote: “Good to know, now if you @NNPCgroup just take a break on making yourselves look good and just conclude the NNPC recruitment, maybe just maybe.”
When contacted, NNPC’s Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr Samson Makoju, pleaded with applicants to exercise patience with the process.
“When we started this exercise, all information regarding the process was in the public domain. As an organisation, if we have not completed that exercise, we plead with our various stakeholders to please be patient with us because it would not make sense to come up with impossible timelines on when the exercise would be concluded.
“The whole process has been transparent so far and by the time we are done with it, Nigerians would be proud of the outcome. We have a Group Managing Director (GMD) which core values and mandate is anchored on transparency globally,” he stated.
An applicant, who pleaded not be named for fear of being witch-hunted, said the whole process has been frustrating.
He said the last he heard from the Corporation was when he received a N20,000 credit alert on September 2, 2019, purportedly to cover the cost of his flight and accommodation for the exercise slated for 7 am on July 6, 2019.
“For those of us that came from Lagos, we were asked to write our names and account details and that they would get back to us. But I was surprised when I got the N20,000 with NNPC details. That amount is ridiculous because it not even enough to take care of my flight to Abuja, talk less of hotel accommodation. But that is not the issue, let them release the result of the oral interview so that we would know our fate and move ahead.”
Commenting on the development, a former President of the Nigerian Institute for Training and Development (NITAD) and a Human Resources practitioner, Mr Tunde Salawu, expressed shock at the development, saying every recruitment process must have a timeline and should never be open-ended for the sake of transparency.
He said the NNPC recruitment exercise, which started about 10 months ago, has failed the principles of globally accepted standards for an intake process.
“In the case of NNPC, the announcement and publication of vacancies may have been to fulfil due process. But for me, it is more of politics. They may have filled up those slots using political considerations,” the applicant speculated.
He said the normal HR practice is to have a timeline for the intake process; and an opening of the portal to the induction course for successful applicants, saying this principle does not often apply to jobs related to Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs), which, according to him, are politically pre-determined.