Date: 2021-01-28

THE Federal Character Commission, the agency of government saddled with the task of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the principles of the proportional sharing of all government posts is currently enmeshed in a recruitment scandal, The PUNCH has learnt.

The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the FCC, Muheeba Dankaka, who was appointed last year by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), is accused of carrying out a secret recruitment and giving majority of the slots to her kinsmen from Kwara State in breach of the FCC Act.

In a petition dated December 10, 2020 and addressed to the President, it was alleged that Dankaka unilaterally recruited 22 employees out of which 11 of them are from her senatorial district in Kwara State.

The petition, which was signed by 20 out of the 37 FCC commissioners, is titled, 'Brazen breach of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), Federal Character Commission (Establishment) Act and gross abuse of office by the Chairman, Dr. Muheeba F. Dankaka OON, request for urgent intervention by Mr President to salvage the image of the Federal Government and the commission'.

The petition read in part, "It is on record that the chairman of the commission, purporting to exercise her powers as chief executive officer of the commission, sometime in November 2020, employed 22 persons into in the employment of the commission without regard to the federal character principle which the commission is expected to enforce.

"Out of the 22 employees, over 50 per cent of them were not only from the home state of the chairman, they were all from her senatorial district in Kwara State."

According to the petition, when Dankaka learnt that the commissioners were going to take action, she hurriedly halted the recruitment in a letter with reference number FCC/034/SI/Vol.V/1155, addressed to the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.

The commissioners also accused Dankaka of relegating them in all decisions in the commission. In her response which was made available to The PUNCH, the FCC boss did not respond to the secret recruitment, insisting that the commissioners are her subordinates.

When contacted on the telephone, Dankaka said the commissioners were only angry because she refused to give them slots, adding that she did not do any recruitment within the commission.

The FCC chairman said she refused to carry them along in the recruitment of some sensitive agencies for security reasons.