Only in Nigeria

Dr. Anderson Uvie-Emegbo
| credits: File copy

By the time you are reading this, at the very minimum the Minister of the Interior and the head of the Nigerian Immigration Service should no longer be in their positions.

For the first time in my life, I honestly feel ashamed to call myself a Nigerian. But a Nigerian I am and a Nigerian I will always be.

As it had been for a number of years now, the NIS held a paid recruitment exercise. In the wildest imaginations of those who conceived, planned and executed this scam and sham, at no time did they envisage the bewildering events of Saturday, March 15, 2014. The over 520,000 applicants that suffered all through Saturday clearly demonstrates the hopeless state of unemployment and underemployment in Nigeria.

The NIS looks like a great public organisation to work for. From ‘tips’ to ‘runs’, this glamorous paramilitary arm of government is a place of “limitless” possibilities.

Yearly, some of the applicants on that fateful day had unsuccessfully undertaken the same harrowing recruitment exercise. With the reality of their everyday existence staring them in the faces, many chose to believe the impossible — may be Saturday, 15th March, 2014, would be their breakthrough!

A medical doctor colleague of mine (let’s call him Humphrey) was fortunate enough to have escaped from the jaws of the NIS recruitment scam. In 2007 while working as a resident doctor in a Lagos-based private hospital, he earned a monthly gross pay of N100,000. Frustrated by his standard of living, some friends advised him to apply for employment into the NIS as it was his passport to abundance in life.

Convinced, that year, he obtained the form and on a Saturday, he showed up near the old Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi, Lagos. He was dressed in a clean, well pressed shirt and dark trousers with a matching tie. He had a low haircut and his “teddy” (beard) was perfectly styled.

To his surprise, he met thousands of applicants in white T-shirts, white shorts and white canvas shoes — he was the odd man out. He hurriedly bought a white T-shirt, white shorts and white canvas shoes for N300, N250 and N1,000 respectively. There was a syndicate around the corner selling this merchandise to desperate applicants, for, without the kit, one would not be allowed to partake.

They were instructed to run from the start point to a school somewhere in Ikoyi. The gate of the school would be shut after the first 100 persons had entered. Though there were road safety officials at strategic junctions along the route they were to take, there were no ambulances or any sign of emergency medical personnel. No checks were conducted to ascertain the general physical fitness of the applicants (including pregnant women) before the run commenced.

The whistle sounded and off they went. Ten minutes later, a breathless Humphrey stopped running and trudged on till he reached the gate of the school — a journey of over 45 minutes. The gate was already locked and he swears that there was no sign that anyone had entered the gate. It was at that point he realised that he still had an option. He could go back to his N100,000 per month job and that was how he was never again tempted to apply to the NIS.

Today, he is a resident doctor at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja; and come next year, he will become a consultant.

But this is not the story of the typical under-employed or unemployed Nigerian! At the last count, at least 17 “innocent and exploited” Nigerians had lost their lives in at least four centres (Abuja, Minna, Benin and Port Harcourt), including some pregnant women and their unborn babies. This brings me to the concept of “Only in Nigeria” (#OnlyInNigeria).

#OnlyInNigeria would a recruitment exercise for less than 5,000 persons involve over 520,000 persons on a single day; hundreds of thousands in each stadium.

#OnlyInNigeria does online/social recruiting take a back seat in an era where even university entrance exams are beginning to be conducted online! A multinational firm once asked us to recruit a hundred people for an entry level role. We planned to shortlist three times that number (i.e. 300) for the physical interviews. Our advert on an online job portal generated over 16,000 applicants.

We were then able to shortlist about 200 persons that met our requirements. In the case of NIS, the criteria for short-listing should have been more stringent so as to reduce the number of eligible candidates. They should have targeted no more than five or 10 times the final intake for the physical interviews (i.e. about 25,000).

To select the 25,000 over a period of weeks, the 520,000 candidates should have written supervised online tests in large Internet-enabled ICT centres that are available in major cities across the country. The NIS, for the 21st Century, must be digital-enabled with a digitally savvy workforce. It should have engaged various exam bodies who are experienced in handling large scale examinations!

#OnlyInNigeria would the head of the NIS and Moro, the Minister for Interior, neither be sacked nor prosecuted until there is an outcry!

#OnlyInNigeria does greed blind the eyes, dull the senses and allow parochial political and selfish economic gains to supersede the common good!

#OnlyInNigeria does a public recruitment exercise lead to an increased maternal mortality rate — Millennium Development Goals.

#OnlyInNigeria are dead victims blamed for being impatient and unruly!

#OnlyInNigeria do serving public officers reject blame for what is obviously a recurrent, unrepentant and unrelenting case of greed, corruption, ineptitude, incompetence and wickedness!

#OnlyInNigeria do public “overlords” blame everyone else but themselves for failure to lead or manage!

#OnlyInNigeria do political holders set up “their own committees and stick around to salvage the mess they created” — no shame, no conscience, no sense of responsibility!

What then is the true value of an unemployed Nigerian in the eyes of the Nigerian government?

The answer is obvious: N1, 000. That’s why I say “Moro Must Go” (#MoroOut)!