Unemployment in Nigeria
The March 15, 2014, stampedes that left at least 16 people dead during a recruitment exercise by the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) had served the major purpose of drawing global attention to the alarming rate of unemployment in the country. About 520, 000 people were shortlisted for the NIS recruitment exams, at the end of which only 4,556 would have been recruited based on the available vacancies. To register for the exams, the applicants had paid N1000 each, meaning the NIS raked in about N520 million from jobless citizens.
The applicants were to sit for the exams at selected test centres in all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, on that fateful day. In the FCT alone, it was reported that over 60,000 candidates thronged the M. K. O. Abiola Stadium, the venue of the recruitment exams, and were allowed access through only a single doorway, perhaps to avoid ‘gate crashing’.