Ms. Bamishe’s demise and the call for safer recruitment
By Uzo Ejekwumadu
It appears that our country has gradually descended into the Hobbesian state of nature, where life is depicted in gory detail with the frightening events that daily assail the collective psyche of helpless Nigerians. At a time when the nation is experiencing excruciating economic difficulties and the majority of the people have given up on the capacity of the state to provide adequate protection for all, there is a continuous stream of frightening news that could make one believe that the so-called Armageddon has finally berthed on our shores.
Kidnaping, raping, murder, and all sorts of violent crimes have become common place. It is even more worrisome that those who have been employed in sensitive positions that deal directly with members of the public including children, the aged and other vulnerable individuals have now joined the band of atavistic skull miners, human organ harvesters, rapists and paedophiles, for ritual purposes. The renowned Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso perhaps did not envisage this level of depravity when developing his theories of crime.
The recent tragic death of Miss Bamishe Ayanwole, who was murdered on the public transport, BRT in Lagos, highlights the pandemic we are facing and that nowhere is safe. It was alleged that one driver, whose name was not worthy of mentioning, had connived with some men of the underworld to carry out that dastardly act and cut short a blossoming life full of hope and dreams. It was our prayer that God grant her eternal rest, and the police and government ensure that justice is dispensed speedily. Last week, after months of delays, the BRT driver was finally convicted by the Lagos State court for murdering Miss Bamishe. It was a great relief that, at last, justice had been done. It is a consolation, even though not sufficient to resurrect the life that was painfully snuffed out at the prime of her youth. We should also not miss the opportunity to reflect on our society and some practical measures that we need to carry out to safeguard the public.
READ ALSO: Okowa and Nigeria’s pseudo-democracy
A litany of such gruesome murders carried out by people in employment in the recent past months can give a glimpse of where we are across the nation. In Kano, a nursery schoolteacher had the wickedness of heart to murder and bury little Miss Hanifa Abubakar, an innocent five-year-old girl under his care. According to a newspaper report, in Benin City, a housemaid employed by the family of Chief Igbinedion recently murdered their matriarch and octogenarian while she was sleeping in her home and made away with some of her money and valuables. Another depressing example was the murder case that involved the employees and the proprietor of Hilton Hotel and Resort Oshogbo, where one Mr Timothy Adegoke, a postgraduate student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, who had lodged there after arriving from Abuja for an exam, was gruesomely murdered and secretly buried in a shallow grave.
There have been cases of medical doctors raping their patients or even police officers who are employed to safeguard the public robbing and raping vulnerable people seeking protection, becoming more dangerous than the criminals. Similar reports are now common of nurses involved in child trafficking and running ‘baby factories’, or even religious leaders arrested for rape and sexual molestation of minors, among others. Mrs Osinachi Nwachukwu, a celebrity gospel singer, tragically joined the list some months ago as she died of alleged domestic violence perpetrated by her ‘pastor’ husband. Again, the court in Abuja has convicted him, and regrettably, he is awaiting the hangman’s rope. There have been apprehensions fuelled by allegations of some criminal elements with a history of terrorism involvement, gaining employment in the army, police, and other critical security agencies. It is against this background that the need for safer recruitment in employment is advocated and needs to be given utmost priority by employers, organisations’ leadership and relevant stakeholders.
Traditionally, the emphasis during recruitment of the workforce tends to be on the competencies and skills required to do the job. Applicants are often sifted through a series of selection methods, such as aptitude tests, competency-based interviews, assessment centre exercises, and sometimes practical demonstrations are included. Successful candidates are then required to nominate their previous employers and other assumed credible people for the purpose of obtaining character references. While there is nothing wrong with these processes, it must be noted that they are often focused on identifying the candidate’s knowledge, skills, and aptitude to carry out the assigned responsibilities and suitability for the role. In Nigeria, many interviewers and recruitment agencies hardly include conducting a full background check to assess if the candidate has previous criminal records or any involvement in the past that could disqualify them and make them unsuitable for the role they are being considered for.
Identifying such high-risk offenders earlier, through rigorous background checks, is essential in preventing ritualists and dangerous criminal elements from slipping through the net to gain employment, from where they continue to lay siege on vulnerable and innocent clients. To manage situations like this, in many developed countries, before successful candidates are recruited and issued employment letters, Disclosure and Barring Services (DBS) certificates are obtained from the relevant agency, which holds citizens’ criminal records.
Considering that criminal activities could be committed by anyone irrespective of status, gender, age, ethnicity, class, or creed, those in employment where the risk of vulnerable people using their services and coming in contact with minors must be cross-checked. Those working in facilities such as educational institutions, health institutions, transport sector, hotels and recreation centres, places of worship, private and public owned security agencies and companies, to mention but a few, need to be subjected to a background check before employment and periodically while in service. Who could have believed that a driver under the employment of a government-owned transport corporation could be involved in the death of Bamishe? There is a high possibility that such a person had no comprehensive background check before being employed; he may have even relied on his connection with one ‘Oga at the top’ or the other, without any scrutiny, to obtain his employment.
At different times, a knee-jerk approach to solve criminality being perpetrated by public transport operators and for the purposes of raking in revenue, some state governments had often embarked on the registration of drivers and road transport workers and even mounted closed-circuit television (CCTV) in strategic locations. While these are commendable and necessary, it is not sufficient and thorough to prevent abuse, given the new variant of ritual killings and violent crimes now perpetrated by criminals in the guise of employees. Urgent and concerted multiagency collaborative efforts are required to make it more difficult for violent criminals to gain access and use corporate organisations’ facilities and public spaces to carry out their heinous activities. Eliminating them through safer recruitment, which has worked in the developed world, is highly recommended as part of a raft of strategic measures that organisations must deploy, review and monitor by the leadership team of the organisations.
A prerequisite towards achieving safer recruitment requires that basic information about the citizens is also collected, processed, and updated regularly in a central database. In the absence of that, obtaining credible information about potential job applicants and the level of risk exposure of those in employment becomes difficult, and selection decisions that could checkmate them are also jeopardised. It is a well-known fact that in our country, basic and reliable data, such as census figures, are often lacking, not to mention criminal records, except where high-profile cases are involved. The government, therefore, has a very important role to play in ensuring that already existing agencies with statutory responsibilities in the collection, storage and retrieval of crime information are alive to their responsibilities.
Digitalising the records by the government agencies and processes for accessing DBS data by corporate organisations should be made easier, and it would immensely facilitate safer recruitment. Relying on manual fingerprints alone, like it used to be at Nigeria Police CID, Alagbon Close, Ikoyi in the past, has also become an obsolete approach and may not encourage high-volume recruiting organisations to adopt it in safeguarding their clients. Furthermore, the government must make it compulsory for certain identified professional groups and industrial sectors to obtain background checks periodically for those employees or contractors to continue to work in the field.
In the event of conviction following the conclusion of the judicial process, criminal data must be entered in the national crime database with details of the person. Such an approach could also act as a deterrent measure against culprits, and everyone knows the consequences of such DBS records on their life chances, including restrictions on employment in certain sectors or holding positions of trust. Businesses, on the other hand, would benefit from such safer recruitment with increased confidence and satisfaction that customers would have using their facilities and services, which positively impacts financial performance. It is also vital for employers to periodically train and retrain their human resources officers and every manager involved in the recruitment and selection of new staff on safer recruitment strategies and protocols as a first step towards creating a conducive and safe environment and the protection of clients and service users.
A befitting tribute we can give to late Miss Bamishe Ayanwole and those who have been tragically murdered by fellows who ought to have a duty of care for them is by eliminating people with a recorded violent criminal history from taking employment where they could use their job positions to unleash more physical and psychological harm and even defrauding of vulnerable people. Prevention is better than a cure is an old saying that remains relevant when assessing the risk of employees with known criminal records.
- Dr Uzo Ejekwumadu is a faculty member at the Business School, University of Westminster, London and expert in HRM and employment studies.
