There is this popular axiom among the Yoruba folks. It says that a lie may have been on the run for 20 years but truth will catch up with it and overtake it in one day.
The maxim applies to the Nigerian situation as regards unemployment. And it has to take the weekend’s nationwide tragedy that consumed more than a score of immigration job seekers to expose the SURE-P deceits and You-WiN lies the government has been flushing down our throats all this while.
Last Saturday was like any other day. But for some hundreds of thousands of Nigerian job seekers including those in search of greener pastures, it turned out to be a tragic jaunt.
When the news of the horrific incident broke out on the fateful day, I remembered a young, fragile-looking girl I met at the Diamond Bank, Kubwa branch in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, around October, last year. She was at the bank to obtain what has now turned out to be an immigration-induced death sentence valued at N1, 000. She was a bit at sea as to how to handle the process. Then, she approached me for help as if I looked like an immigration officer. I did not know her from Eve. Even though I helped her out, I wished I could discourage her from pursuing the vision, knowing how employment exercise is pre-determined in the government circle. She had to be well-connected, be in a position to heavily bribe her way through or be bedded by one “oga” at the top, otherwise her miserable N1, 000 would go down the drain.
A frightening thought ran through my mind as the catastrophic tidings unfolded: Could that slim damsel (so fragile I could blow her off balance with a breath of my mouth), be among those trampled to death or maimed during the stampede at the Abuja National Stadium? I shuddered momentarily and prayed that she was not among the victims.
The nationwide calamity is a gory testament to the terrifying unemployment situation in the country. I have written severally in this space raising the alarm about the sorry state of joblessness in the country. I also proffered solutions and warned the government at all levels that they were slowly and steadily breeding urban guerrillas by refusing to tame the monster. However, I must confess that I did not know that the situation is this terrifying. Or how else do you explain the emergence of six million job hunters gunning for 5, 000 slots that would eventually elude them?
The story making the rounds is that an agency highly connected to the minister of interior, Abba Moro, a back-slid comrade with heart of stone, hijacked the recruitment process from the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) and rendered its board irrelevant. The sum of N1, 000 from 6 million applicants, translating into N6bn is too tempting a windfall to be left for some inconsequential civil servants to share.
Granted that no one could have stopped the six million applicants from throwing their money into the bottomless pit dug by Abba Moro (is he still on his seat?) and his collaborators, the fraudsters could have saved the hapless job seekers the calamity that befell them by pegging the number of those selected for the final exercise to a manageable size per state. For 5, 000 vacancies, inviting a total number of 37, 000 candidates would have made more sense instead of the over 500, 000, i.e. 1, 000 per state and the FCT. This should be the paradigm of a more successful recruitment now that the government has decided to conduct a fresh exercise. With the avaricious recruitment agency out of the scene, the Nigeria Immigration Service Board should be able to handle the exercise under the supervision of the comptroller-general (earlier sidelined in the process) and his top officers located across the state capitals.
The decision of the federal government to give automatic employment to the relations of the dead as well as the casualties of the mayhem is a welcome development. It is hope that there will be transparency in the fresh exercise. You and I know that employment into public institutions is based on who you know. The 5, 000 openings had already been shared among those who had connections in high places… from the presidency to the traditional rulers.
Beyond the deaths and mayhem is the major factor that breeds joblessness in Nigeria: bad governance. We are told that our economy is growing admirably. But the benefits are lost to systemic corruption, the invidious crime that impoverishes the masses.
Nigerians are strange creatures with an amazing grace to endure avoidable hardship. It took the December 17, 2010 self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, in protest against the confiscation of his wares by the municipal authorities to trigger off a revolution that forced sit-tight president Zine Ben Ali to step down on January 14, 2011, after 23 years in power. It was Bouazizi’s main income source since the government could not provide him one. The domino effect led to wild protests across the Arab world culminating in the fall of Libyan strongman Moamar Ghadaffi, and the cruel war that is raging in Syria.
Unemployment is a time-bomb. But the federal government is deluding itself that it is creating millions of direct and indirect jobs that nobody sees or are drowned in the ocean of redundancy. These jobless youths are the tools that are employed in the devil’s workshop exemplified by Boko Haram terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping, among other social vices plaguing this God-forsaken country.
The tragedy should be thoroughly investigated and all those found culpable should be punished to serve as a deterrent. This is one calamity too many.
