Of employment apartheid and how Nigerians always punch below their weight
As it morphs from egg, larva, pupa to imago, there comes a time when the butterfly becomes an ugly caterpillar. Call that the pupa stage. A close observer will realize that after a while, the caterpillar stops crawling all over the place and freezes up. In a week or two, a crack appears in the […]
As it morphs from egg, larva, pupa to imago, there comes a time when the butterfly becomes an ugly caterpillar. Call that the pupa stage. A close observer will realize that after a while, the caterpillar stops crawling all over the place and freezes up. In a week or two, a crack appears in the shell of the caterpillar and something starts to wriggle inside that shell. If one were to show so much love for the butterfly, by helping to free that creature from the shell, what will emerge is a formless ugly moth, which dies off quickly; not a butterfly. The process of wriggling is the process by which a butterfly forms its beautiful colourful wings.
Lesson: After sending our children to the most expensive schools, we should be careful how we shepherd them into jobs and do everything else for them. Many times, these overprotective acts preclude them from blossoming mentally and growing beyond the parents.
The recruitment saga in the Central Bank of Nigeria is indeed a serious matter that cannot be brushed aside or wished away. It is serious because somehow, the CBN has been turned into a Rich Kid’s Club, as politicians and men of power in Nigeria wangled their children into positions at the Apex bank. Yet the only way Nigeria will be great is when we lift up as many people as possible from poverty, not when we create new class segregations.
Not only at CBN
It needs be noted though, that this phenomenon whereby the children of the superrich (most of whom have fed off this country through corruption) get the choicest jobs, is not limited to the CBN. It is present in every other parastatal in Nigeria. None of them will be willing to release their staff list for public scrutiny. And that is probably where the corruption war falls flat on its face. When favours are being exchanged in this manner, how strict can anyone be? Like we have seen in recent times, the politicians merely gang up against the rest of us, while feathering their own nests. Meanwhile, information at our disposal shows this practice may have been more rampant under Emir Sanusi, who employed so many young people, perhaps in a bid to dilute the age profile of CBN staff.
One problem is that as usual, you can take a horse to the stream but cannot force the horse to drink water. So, many of those rich kids are not ‘feeling’ the job – if I may use their own lingua. Most of them would rather be out playing music and getting famous like other children of the rich such as Naeto C (KemaChikwe’s son), Falz the Badh Guy (Femi Falana’s son), or DJ Cuppy (Femi Otedola’s daughter). They have also seen how easy it is for Olamide to shake hands with President Buhari and put his hand around VP Osinbajo’s neck, so in this age where things move so fast, they are not ready to put in 25 years of silent, slow drudge in a single organization just to become aPrincipal Manager! What is more, it is important to consider the psychology of this illegal recruitment, because most of these children were probably made to drop their surnames – if what we have read in newspapers are true. Ejike Emmanuel Ibe is alleged to be Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu’s son, while Nagode Abdulrahman is Abdulrahman Dambazau’s son, among others.
How are these children expected to process this new wonderful job appointments knowing that they had to make this ‘sacrifice’? These children are more emotional than we who grew up in a different era and setting. The fact that they had to go through this unorthodox process will affect their productivity because many of them will feel like they are being made to do something illegal (dropping their surnames), after living a well-protected life thus far. Some of these teenagers google the names of their fathers to see who has a criminal/corruption record or what their parents have been up to, as documented on the internet. Some of them who know their parents are extremely corrupt, become rebels just to give feedback to those parents. This happens often when they start to see so much sheaves of dollars lying around everywhere in their homes.
There is also the phenomenon in most of Nigeria’s well-paying parastatals whereby retiring parents ensure they replace themselves with one of their children. Some get greedy. In one parastatal, a retired GM inserted four of his children in different departments where they are largely jobless. On many occasions, father/mother and children start working in the same public organization, usually at different branches. A keen observer will notice these ‘children’ (that is what I will call them) constantly outside the premises of these organisations, taking ‘smoking breaks’, the way they are used to abroad where most of them studied. Others are busy gallivanting from one desk to the other, ‘toasting’ their fellow ‘ajebota’ colleagues. The girls are usually the more serious-minded of the lot. Many of the boys are more interested in driving ‘popsie’s’ most expensive SUV to the office so as to catch attention. It is not easy to be a big-man’s child. Really, I mean it! Don’t laugh!
Unfortunately, what this ugly phenomena on – senior staff and politicians/political appointees hijacking the recruitment process by intimidating HR and Chief Executives to employ their children and wards – does, is to totally mess up the system and widen the gap between the rich and the poor. We are also aware of the entrenched culture whereby for every advertised recruitment, Senators and Rep members send very long lists that must be prioritized or else! If you don’t have these powerful letters, forget about applying. It used to be that in this country, children of the rich and poor went to the same schools up to university level, and the bright ones floated to the surface or at least had a fair chance of getting on in life irrespective of parental background. Nigeria today is exactly the way our elites want it.
There is even a business sector that has emerged around this problem. In one of Nigeria’s currently embattled parastatals, I was made to know that a senator once took the CV of one of Baba Buhari’s daughter there for employment. His whole quest was to be in Baba’s good books, nothing else.
Shall we sack Emefiele?
Just as parents punch below their weights and sometimes limit the destiny of their children by seeking jobs for them in these places – even at the expense of doing away with the family name – so also have many Nigerians decided to reduce a serious matter to the tiny objective of removing Governor Emefiele. If we want to remove CEOs, why not push for the removal of ALL CEOs in all Nigerian parastatals? Why are we turning this again into a ‘na-who-dem-catch-be-barawo’ matter? And true to our nature, Nigerians would rather lynch a single person while passing up on a greater opportunity of making a profound change in society.