Thousand of young job seekers invited to take an aptitude test by the  Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) have seized all roads leading to the National Stadium venue of the test in protest.

The applicants who said they were shortchanged by the Immigration Service are currently chanting anti- government songs insisting they wont be going home anytime soon.
 Several of them said, " after all, we have no jobs and, therefore, there is nothing to return home to do."

They are  also calling for the refund of N1,000 application fee taken from them to enroll for the NIS job screening test that did not hold in Lagos as planned.

 At least 100,000 of them came to the 45,000-capacity National Stadium  early today, with, the hope of gettin, a position out of the 3,000 job openings declared by the NIS but the screening exercise was cancelled.

 Already 10 applicants  has died in a stampede at the Abuja venue of the job screening of candidates for the NIS jobs.

 Some 25, 000 applicants were scheduled to participate in the NIS job recruitment interview holding at the 16, 000 capacity Liberation Stadium in Port Harcourt.

 However, source learnt that several NIS job applicants were seriously wounded, while some lost their certificates in the melee.

The Public Relations Officer of NIS in Rivers, Mr Abang Bisong, who confirmed the incident to NAN in Port Harcourt on Saturday, said the stampede was caused when about 20, 000 candidates forced their way into the stadium.

“During the stampede, some candidates fell and were trampled upon by others, while some became unconscious due to the incident.

“The victims have been taken to the Military Hospital for rehabilitation and treatment.

“At the moment, we have not received any information on their present condition,” Bisong said.

Bisong, a Superintendent of Immigration, said that NIS had advertised positions for university graduates, diploma holders and Senior Secondary School Certificate holders.

An eyewitness and victim, Mr Jasper Saturday, corroborated Bisong’s account but commended security agents in the manner they handled the crowd.

Saturday, who claimed to have lost his original certificates, said that gunshots released by security agents to disperse the crowd averted “a tragedy which could have occurred”.

“The immigration officers were trying to screen candidates from the stadium gate and in the process some candidates became impatient and started pushing us from the back.

“Those of us who were in the front fell to the ground because others stepped on us and as a result, some candidates lost consciousness.

“If not for the gunshots released to the air by security agents to scare the candidates pushing us from behind, there would have been several casualties,” Saturday said.

However , in Imo State, Governor Rochas Okorocha assured the job seekers that he would ensure that they were not shortchanged in the recruitment.

Okorocha gave the assurance in Owerri on Saturday at Dan Anyiam Stadium where thousands of applicants gathered for the aptitude test for employment in NIS.

He said he would ensure that the employment quota for Imo was filled by indigenes of the state.