This article
has been written in sad response to two recent “employment advertisement”
scandals that have involved (or, rather, been repudiated) by the Federal
Ministry of Labour and Employment and the Guaranty Trust Bank respectively.
I
am particularly annoyed as I sincerely send such job alerts, recruitment
adverts, etc. to hundreds of young people in Nigeria I feel that I can help,
even though I cannot personally provide jobs for them, or influence their
chances of getting jobs; all I can do is make job opportunities accessible to
them by informing them of these adverts. I now find myself in the very awkward
and uncomfortable situation that I may have been inadvertently sending false
recruitment and employment news to these young people. I am sorry.
I have always
affirmed that we are a very bad, irredeemably corrupt and evil society (and I
remain convinced that is so). See some my articles on this
(Nigeriavillagesquare.com and other online and newspaper publications):
*A people
beyond redemption?;
*A Peoples
Aversion to the Truth is their Undoing;
*Our Own
Worst Enemy: The Iniquities of a People;
*A Virulent
Form of Absurdity: When Society and Politics Go Insane;
*A problem
with the Truth: Of Certificates and No Certificates;
*A Flawed and
Vague Sense of Morality and Conscience;
*Transforming
Ibadan: A Study in Resistance to Change; etc.
A very wicked
people to ourselves!! I don't know why we are like this. Is it because of the
hard times we are going through that has turned us into obtuse, conscienceless monsters;
against each other; taking advantage of each other, cutting corners to acquire
wealth and power by all means? Or is it in our culture and tradition? What do
these fake news apostles have to gain – money, power, notoriety? Sometimes,
money is not even involved, maybe just a warped sense of humour or sadism at
its worst.
Apart from
being notorious specialists in official and government corruption, we are also
known the entire world over as fraudsters and drug smugglers. The foul smell of
corruption and crime follow Nigeria’s citizens everywhere we go in the world
and show our green passport or our names.
Now we are
gradually becoming notorious for creating and spreading false and fake news to
distract and confuse the government and the public in general.
Things were
not like this when Nigeria was "good"; when we were growing up with a
deep sense and upbringing of decency and morality, as well as the teaching and
tenet of “Love – and take good care of - thy neighbour”, up till the 1980's.
What happened to us? Can we get out of this quagmire of hopelessness, poverty,
despair, desperation, deceit, deception, insecurity, conscienceless impunity
and insensitivity that we have found ourselves trapped in though decades of
poor, vision-less and focus-less leadership, exacerbated by dogmatic and blind
follower-ship that is leading us every day to the edge of a chasm of bankruptcy
and non-nation?
What have we
done to ourselves? And we keep praising bad governments (federal and state) and
celebrating corrupt politicians, civil servants and selfish, dodgy business
moguls? And queuing behind regional, tribal, religious, political and selfish
interests?
Some of us do
not see anything wrong in some retarded and murderous opportunists looting and sharing
our commonwealth? In fact, we celebrate them and sing their praises to high
heaven.
The alarming
and shameful thing about this is that even the official government is, was, or
has been involved. For example, the Immigration recruitment scam of 2014. And
now the fake Federal Government directive asking our young people to troop en
masse to federal secretariats to submit their CVs. Whoever thought of such a
fraud or fake mass news should be shot! Banks
and companies are also involved in denying advertising for recruitment after
such adverts have gone viral. The poor, hopeless, hapless young graduates of
Nigeria are the vulnerable victims!
It is a sad
fact that in Nigeria of today, the unemployed youth and graduate face an uphill
task in surviving in their own country and society. This is mainly due to
leadership deficiency which has no clue as to how to solve the problem of
unemployment and creating jobs in the country. The evidence are there to see
littered all over the national landscape – abandoned factories and moribund
infrastructure, while people in government are able to spend money of new,
useless and economically unviable projects, just to satisfy their ego, and this
is apart from directly stealing money that could have been used to generate or
create employment.
This is
compounded by a noxious environment of inordinate and wicked corruption. Apart
from candidates facing discrimination due to their ethnicity, religion and
regionalism, they also face bribery and corruption from officials. It is a
well-known fact that many government agencies, institution, ministries and
departments actually demand huge sums of money from candidates in order to be
employed. The same also obtains in some banks, industrial companies and even
private employers all over Nigeria. Also, these employers are known to have
asked candidates to buy employment application forms, and these include federal
and state governments. Female applicants are even more vulnerable as they
sometimes have to succumb to sexual demands in order to secure employment.
Shame on all those degenerate old men!
In many
cases, it is the existing staff of these organisations that benefit, as they
corner the application forms and procedures and inform only their family
members or friends. Nepotism and corruption go together. I learnt that in a
particular case with the Civil Service Commission employment exercise, where
candidates were asked to apply online, parts of the forms did not even exist or
could not be downloaded, but the real forms were known only to existing senior staff
to direct to their friends’ children and their own families. I am not even
going to write about the notorious Immigration scam that led to several deaths
sometime in 2014. It is happening in all government departments and agencies.
It is impossible for one to be employed in most government – federal, state and
local - positions nowadays unless you know somebody or you are ready to bribe
or grant sexual favours. And of course, many jobs in government are never
advertised; the senior staff just hand employment letters to their own family
and friends.
This is not a
cause to be making humour of. It is pure wickedness, evil and is a reflection
of our depravity and moral decadence; our downward spiral as a people and
society. It is man’s inhumanity against man.
So what
solutions do we have to overcome this problem, which is getting worse by the
day? The government must not only intervene but our orientation, mind-set,
moral perception need to change or we are doomed. It must be a collective
effort to start fighting this evil perpetration on our youth. There must be a
viable, enforceable employment laws, regulations and bye-laws. The governments
must create jobs and make employment accessible to all, free of charge and
without discrimination to all Nigerians. Of course, governments must also
create environment for self-employment as it cannot employ everybody, nor is it
a good idea for any government to employ everybody anyway.
The
government must also NOT be the largest employer of labour, and so it must
start shedding and diversifying its operations, e.g. outsourcing, public
private partnerships (PPP), etc. It is directly because in Nigeria, the
governments are the largest employer of labour that we have the largest
incidences and levels of corruption in government – everybody wants to work in
government to access the loot.
My
suggestions are by no means exhaustive.
Tell the
Truth always!
Akintokunbo A Adejumo MSc, Dip Mngt, CIHM, MCMI, FITP, MIH
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