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Applicants abandoned by NNPC write open letter to Buhari, allege secret recruitment

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Over 10,000 applicants who were shortlisted for experienced cadre positions by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have written an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, claiming they have been abandoned while those who did not apply for the positions have been employed secretly.

In the letter, the aggrieved applicants said those who applied as graduate trainees had already been employed, while those who applied for the experienced category had not been contacted by the NNPC since June 2019 when they sat for the aptitude test.

The letter jointly signed by the applicants read:

“In March 2019, the then NNPC GMD, Dr Maikanti Baru (now deceased) with his management team that included the current GMD, Mallam Mele Kyari, through various national newspapers, placed advertisements welcoming applications to vacancies in different positions involving graduate trainees and experienced hires after the needs assessment of the corporation.

“By June 1, 2019, a CBT aptitude test was conducted nationwide for the over 60,000 candidates shortlisted in an open and transparent manner monitored by leading television stations.

“After the assessment, about 10,000 candidates passed the test and were scheduled for interviews between July 1 and 10, 2019, at the NNPC Towers, Abuja, conducted by the corporation’s technical panels.”

The angry applicants said they became apprehensive when the communication lines the NNPC had used in communicating with them became stalled and for over one year, the Kyari-led management had stopped passing information to them, thereby lending credence to insinuations that some favoured candidates had been employed secretly.

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They said on February 14, 2020, the NNPC management released the outcome of the interview for only the graduate trainees titled ‘External Communication on 2019/2020 Recruitment,’ where it was mentioned that the experienced component of the recruitment would be addressed in due course.

“The GMD, Mallam Mele Kyari, appeared on the monthly webinar programme, the June edition of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists, and several questions about this lingering incomplete recruitment were posed,” the letter continued.

“He responded that the ‘experienced hire candidates will be contacted as soon as possible’. Your Excellency, till date, this pledge has not been fulfilled and still there has been no communication or any form of contact with the affected candidates, who are very qualified Nigerian young professionals, who have been assessed and interviewed by the highest technical organ of the corporation itself.

“Your Excellency, we the aggrieved applicants implore you to kindly look into this matter and live up to your promise to curb corruption by ensuring that the process is transparently completed.”

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