Reported by: Oahimire Omone Precious | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
The call came on a Friday morning, during a radio programme called Let's Talk Nigeria on Sparkling FM. Barr. Eyo Nsa Ekpo, the Chairman of the Cross River State Local Government Service Commission, was not there to talk about policy or reform. He was there to confess. For months, job seekers in Cross River State had been paying money they could not afford, hoping to secure employment in the local government service. They were cajoled, frightened, and intimidated, according to Ekpo, into parting with amounts ranging from N100,000 to N1.5 million. Some of those who applied for senior positions paid as much as N1.3 million and N1.5 million. And then they waited.
What they received in return, in some cases, were fake employment letters. Documents that looked official. Letters that bore the weight of government authority. Papers that convinced them they had finally secured the job that would change their lives. But the jobs did not exist. The letters were forgeries. And the money they had paid—more than N51.8 million in total—was gone.
The scale of the scam is staggering. Forty-seven applicants were defrauded in the cancelled 2024/2025 local government recruitment exercise, according to Ekpo, who disclosed the figures following investigations by a panel constituted by the state government after complaints and public uproar. The panel found that as many as 47 victims were cajoled, frightened, and intimidated to part with over N51.8 million for fake local government jobs. The perpetrators went further, issuing fake employment letters to applicants, thereby giving them the impression that they had secured government jobs. Some of the alleged perpetrators also manipulated the process to accommodate family members, including persons who were not resident in Cross River State.
The human cost of this scam is difficult to quantify. These are not faceless statistics. They are young graduates who had spent years searching for work. They are parents who borrowed money to pay the fees. They are families who sold valuables or dipped into savings meant for school fees or rent. They are people who believed that a government recruitment exercise, however flawed, was at least a legitimate pathway to a better future. Instead, they were preyed upon by a network that saw their desperation as an opportunity for profit.
The government's response has been swift, but it has also laid bare the scale of the rot. The entire recruitment exercise has been cancelled. A panel of enquiry found that it lacked executive approval by Governor Bassey Edet Otu and breached public service ethics, extant laws, and financial regulations. The panel also established institutional complicity, ineptitude, lack of transparency, and accountability in the process. Only 821 personnel whose recruitment was duly approved by the governor will be retained on the government payroll. Eighty-three CROSIEC personnel who were earlier employed by the Cross River Civil Service Commission and redesignated to the Local Government Service Commission have also been exempted. Everyone else who entered the payroll through unauthorised or illegal recruitment processes has been phased out.
For those who lost their jobs as a result of the cancellation, the government has promised compensation. "The issue of what will be seen as compensatory is still being worked out," Ekpo said, adding that affected persons would be allowed to reapply when a new recruitment portal opens within the next two to three weeks. The government has also approved the recruitment of 4,000 fresh workers into the local government service, a process Ekpo said would deploy digital platforms and modern recruitment procedures to ensure employment was based strictly on established requirements. The Attorney-General and relevant law enforcement agencies have been directed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the recruitment exercise and prosecute persons found culpable.
But for the 47 victims who paid money they will likely never recover, the promise of a fresh recruitment exercise rings hollow. They are the casualties of a system that turned the search for a job into a gamble with their livelihoods. They are the reason why Ekpo described the cancelled exercise as a "criminal enterprise." And they are a reminder that when government processes are opaque, when oversight is weak, and when desperation is high, the most vulnerable will always be the ones who pay the price.
The state government has said it cannot legitimise appointments that were not lawfully authorised or approved. It has expressed sympathy for those who fell victim to the scheme but maintained that it cannot assume responsibility for appointments that were never authorised, approved, or issued through lawful recruitment procedures. "To do otherwise would amount to legitimizing fraud, compromising due process and undermining the integrity of the public service," the government said. It is a defensible position, but it does not answer the question that the victims are asking: who will return the money they paid, and who will be held accountable for the deception that cost them everything?
The fresh recruitment exercise, expected to commence in two weeks, will be watched closely. The government has promised transparency, fairness, and a process that will not be commercialised. It has assured qualified indigenes and eligible applicants of a level playing field. But trust, once broken, is difficult to rebuild. The 47 victims who paid N51.8 million for jobs that never existed are not just a statistic. They are a warning. And unless the perpetrators are prosecuted and the compensation is meaningful, the warning will be ignored, and the next set of desperate job seekers will become the next set of victims.
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