Opinion
Enough Of This Rip Off
Daily, Nigerian newspapers are awash with employment or recruitment advertisements.
Ordinarily, such adverts should call for celebration as hiring new hands is an indication that the economy is looking up, in spite of the comatose vital manufacturing sector. But it is bewildering to observe that many paid adverts for recruitment require applicants to purchase scratch cards of two thousand naira (N2,000,00) and above for application forms that are usually accessed online. Ever since, some government departments and agencies including the Police pioneered it,demanding payments from job applicants has become the rule rather than the exception. While I cogitated on reasons government departments and agencies will resort to ripping off poor applicants when money may have been provided in their budgets for recruitment, I could not but be disconcerted at the insensitivity of some of our policy makers.
Like everything Nigerian, the concept has caught on. Many a smart Alec now sees it as a route to easy money; far easier than Yahoo Yahoo and without the perpetrators having to look behind their shoulders, at least at the moment, for agents of EFCC.
It is as easy as ABC. Arrange an organization. Talk with scratch card producers.
Prepare adverts with well-laid out graphics featuring well-fed faces. Place the advert in the print and electronic media. Sit back and watch the millions roll in.
This is absurdly ridiculous. No where in the world are applicants for jobs fleeced this way. Indeed, the reverse is the case. In organized societies, applicants who have been screened, shortlisted and invited for interview are paid to cover hotelexpenses and fare to and from the location of interview. That has been the practice even in this country. Government agencies and reputable companies pay applicants short-listed and invited for interview. The EU/Ministry of Health job interviews of April 2004 is an example in this regard.
More worrisome is the demand for money from potential recruits into the Nigerian Navy and Air Force. Where does the money go? Is there no budget to cover the cost of recruitment? Why fleece someone who has decided to make a career in the armed forces, someone who could lay down his life for the country at any moment? In the developed world, there are incentives for joining the Army. At the height of the Iraq war, such incentives were made even more enticing.
It is disquieting and certainly disheartening to observe that even nonprofit organizations and voluntary agencies have joined in the mad rush to further impoverish the unemployed amongst us. Page 76 of The Guardian of Tuesday August 5,2008, carried two nausea-inducing adverts. One of the adverts was placed by Accident Victims Rescue & Information Services of Nigeria (AVRIS) and the other by AFRIDEV (whatever that means) that claims to be a member of International Volunteer Programme.
Both are supposedly non-profit organizations. While Accident Victims Rescue and Information Services of Nigeria is asking each applicant to part with two thousand and five hundred naira, AFRIDEV is demanding Two Thousand Naira per prospective volunteer. Most recently, the Imo State Government advertised 10, 000 vacant positions that required the unemployed to part with two thousand naira.
The last recruitment exercise of the Immigration Service for about 7000 positions attracted well over 300,000 applicants. Assuming the same number of applicants responds to each of the adverts for non-existent vacancies or volunteer positions, AFRIDEV and AVRIS will rake in six hundred and fifty million naira (N650,000,000.00) and Seven Hundred and Fifty Million Naira (N750,000,000.00) respectively. And AVRIS was recruiting the second batch! It is most absurd and indeed absolutely ethically wrong for job applicants to be made to pay for application forms. It is tales of the unexpected made manifest. Nigerians need be wary of organisations requesting fees from job or volunteer applicants.
It is an apparent red flag. The argument that the application fee is demanded to cover the cost of recruitment and to reduce the volume of respondents is as hollow as it is implausible.
In its advert calling for volunteers to be sent oversees, AFRIDEV claims that volunteers will “assist various organizations abroad in community development projects/humanitarian work on going in various countries such as Spain, USA, Portugal, Denmark, Switzerland, UK, Canada, Macedonia, Brazil, Poland, Europe (sic),South America (sic) etc”. Continuing, the advert claims that “volunteers are paid attractive monthly allowances”. Like American visa lottery that attracts hundreds of thousands of entries from Nigeria, this one is sure going to be a hit. When young Nigerians risk life and limb to try to get to Europe through the Sahara and many die in the process in the desert or by drowning in canoe wrecks, this option will be considered a safer bet to try.
Other than brief visits, I have not lived in Europe so I am not in a position to assess their needs for foreign volunteers and from Nigeria for that matter, with our reputation. But I can emphatically assert America does not need foreign volunteers. At all times, they have more than enough volunteers for community service.
Following the regrettable events of September II, 2001 in America, as the Executive Director of a Nigerian non-profit organisation that catered to victims of disasters – natural or man-made, I wrote to the then American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Edward Jeter informing him of my organisation’s resolve to send in volunteers to assist in the aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. He wrote to thank me profusely for identifying with America in such trying times but diplomatically turned down our offer, saying that the disaster galvanised Americans as never before who volunteered in droves to assist the victims.
Besides while in the US, I was involved with a humanitarian organisation in management position that requires working directly with volunteers. In my almost two and a half years in the position I did not see or hear of foreign volunteers no even at the height of Hurricane Katrina with the massive and extensive damage that it visited on New Orleans, Alabama and Mississippi. Additionally, volunteers are not paid attractive monthly allowances; they receive daily subsistence allowances (DSA), according to UN Agencies recommendations. The Encarta World English Dictionary defines subsistence as the condition of being or managing to stay alive, especially when there is barely enough food or money for survival.
This advert is preying on the poverty and gullibility of Nigerians who daily throng the foreign embassies of the above listed countries in attempts to secure visas to escape the unemployment that is prevalent here. When genuine visitors, businessmen and even government sponsored teams like sportsmen and women are occasionally refused visas because of the fear of absconding and becoming illegal immigrants, someone is advertising that they will secure visas for volunteers who could stay up to one month, six months and 2 years.
Which countries are in dire need of volunteers? Is it the developed countries or the developing ones? Additionally, who is the person that volunteers? Is it not someone who is gainfully employed or a retiree that gives some of his/her time to do community work? Who is that Nigerian employer that will allow his employee to leave his duty station for overseas volunteer assignment for 6 months or 2 years? With the benefit of experience, many volunteers in Nigeria are not gainfully employed.
As the Executive Director of Doctors For All Nations, I led volunteers from Lagos, Warri and Port Harcourt to Jesse oil fire disaster of October 1998. Volunteers who were employed returned to their jobs after three days on the ground. The unemployed volunteers remained with us for upwards of 4 weeks. And why oversees volunteering? “Charity”, they say “begins at home”. Have we finished clearing all the drains that are clogged with unsightly pure water sachets and other refuse that cause floods each time it rains in Lagos, for example?
What of the mountains of refuse that block roads and breed rodents and other forms of life that are enemies of man? Taking undue advantage of the high level of unemployment and unwariness in the country to fleece unsuspecting members of the public who are already disadvantaged is nothing but callousness. Calling a spade by its name, it is obtaining money by false pretense.
Let us assume that there are 10500 genuine vacancies that an organization wants to fill and 300,000 applicants responded and paid the prescribed fee, the organization would have swindled 289,500 applicants of their money for whom no service was provided. Our ‘human rights activists’ who are quick to match in the streets of Abuja do not see anything wrong in swindling applicants and further impoverishing them.
This obnoxious and patently fraudulent practice has, for too long, been allowed unfettered space. The Consumer Protection Council, SSS, Police and EFCC, amongst other law enforcement agencies, should do the needful: stop this rip off. It gladdens my heart to observe that JAMB that hitherto charged students to check their results online, has as a result of public outcry, stopped this bad practice. Kudos to JAMB.
Dr. Ahworegba is of the Biographies Development Centre, Lagos.
Prosper Ufuoma Ahworegba
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) once reminded religious leaders of an electoral law that forbids political campaigns in the mosques and churches. That law must have stemmed from stark ignorance and/or complete detachment from reality. Primarily, there is no separation of religion and politics in Islam. The gathering of the faithful in a mosque is essentially the polity at prayer. Therefore, the mosque is a veritable forum for politics. Unavoidably, Imams must preach politics from the mosque dais. Secondly, despite centuries-old determined attempt to separate religion from politics in Christianity, politics and religion remain inseparable, and pastors have to talk politics. Moreover, if every Nigerian generally has political views, and can express them through their different media – singers through their songs, writers through their writings, etc – why are pastors not expected to express their political opinions from the pulpit? Is the pastor’s statement of his political opinions from the pulpit tantamount to political campaign in the church? And churches sometimes invite VIPs, including political figures, and yield the pulpit to them. What is expected of such political figures furnished with a church audience and a pulpit? Are they expected to extol the beauty of the weather outside, the resplendence of the congregants or the excellence of the centre of excellence? No, they will talk politics: extol their political candidacy and political party and denounce their political opponents and their political parties. Will these be tantamount to political campaigns, and thus, a breach of the law? Nigeria is in dire straits. It is reeling from the criminality, dereliction of constitutional responsibilities, irresponsible economic policies, disregard for human lives, and ruthless exploitation of the masses by the Buhari administration. The Buhari administration was the face of an iniquitous oligarchy that had, in advancement of its selfish, cliquish and fiendish interests, literally destroyed the country.
In its acquiescence to terrorism and banditry, the Buhari administration relinquished the control of parts of the country to terrorists and bandits, and allowed Fulani herdsmen to range across the country, unchallenged, killing, raping and kidnapping with impunity. Its much vaunted fight against corruption is a colossal farce; official corruption is thriving at hitherto unprecedented heights. The economy wobbles perilously at the brinks of a collapse; poverty became more pervasive and entrenched, with increasing percentage of Nigerians trapped in extreme, raw-dirt poverty. Horror-struck by terrorism, banditry and Fulani herdsmen murderous lunacy, frazzled by official irresponsibility, corruption and brutality and wrenched by poverty and hunger, Nigerians are vegetating in misery, gloom and despondency. It is impossible for any sane Nigerian,to remain ambivalent or indifferent to the country’s harrowing dilemma. Moreover, unlike other professionals, pastors are exceptionally empowered as social crusaders because their economic base is not susceptible to government and/or corporate sanctions. A government, corporate or university employee that challenges the status quo can, readily be fired from his job. And for opposing the system, a businessman can have his business interests endangered: contracts and business engagements cancelled, and licenses revoked. In addition, pastors are armed with the sacred word of God and the inviolable moral and spiritual authority of the pulpit. Not surprisingly, preachers have played pivotal roles in the struggle against bad rulers, social injustice and other societal evils. In the Black American fight for racial justice, pastors featured prominently: Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, etc on the Muslim side; and Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, etc, on the Christian side. Nigerian preachers should be in the lead in the resistance to this evil oligarchy consummate in its corruption, thievery, anti-human policies, and looting and tearing down the country. Any pastor that is not a party to this struggle must be feigning neutrality in a time of a great national crisis. It has been written that, “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in time of great crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
The solution to our festering multifaceted problems lies in a complete rejection of this coldhearted oligarchy in the 2023 presidential election. Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu are inextricable parts of the oligarchy. Atiku Abubakar has demonstrated disquieting sensitivity to the susceptibilities of violent Islamic fundamentalists. He is a Fulani, and like Muhammadu Buhari, he will pander to expansionism and its associated banditry, terrorism and Fulani herdsmen’s blood-soaked excesses across southern and north central Nigeria. Perplexingly, although Nigerians are sick and tired of Buharism, Bola Tinubu affirmed that his presidency will be a continuation of Buharism. With the ravages Buharism has wrought on Nigeria, why would any sane individual want to continue with Buharism? It must be due to blind loyalty to the outrageous designs of the oligarchy; senescent disconnect from reality; and sadism that gloats in the increasing economic strangulation of Nigeria.
By: Tochukwu Ezukanma
Ezukanma writes in from Lagos.
Before the crude oil was explored and produced in commercial quantity and became the predominant source of revenue for Nigeria, agriculture was proudly the economic mainstay of the country. During the period of regionalised Nigeria, the various regions were committed to generating revenue internally. And such drive was basically on agricultural products. Even with less technological and mechanical approach to farming, the regions enjoyed a degree of food sufficiency. The level of food and fish production among several other agricultural activities was commendable though subsistence in scope. Today, with the production of crude oil in commercial quantities, even states in the restructured Nigeria have not cultivated the vast expanse of arable lands and harnessed the potentials that nature had deposited within the soil. Agriculture is fast becoming archaic and menial for many people. The School-to-Land Programme and the Graduate Farmers Scheme of Rivers State and Federal Government respectively, which provided job for young school leavers and graduates of higher institutions have since become moribund. This is because of the growing apathy of youths to exploit the potentials in farming. The Governments at the three levels are not proactive enough to drive agricultural programmes successfully. In this Information, Communication and Technology driven era, it is unthinkable for young school leavers and graduates, including graduates of agriculture and its related fields, to find a career in agriculture because agriculture is not appealing. Apart from the fact that it takes time to reap the dividends of agriculture, most people are not in the frame of mind to employ the primitive and traditional methods to do agriculture while other sources, even unacceptable ways of making money abound. Agriculture in this age must be approached scientifically and technologically. The teeming rate of unemployment and the dwindling economic prospects should be a reason the Federal Government should diversify the economy, inject fund into the sector for loan at single digit interest rate and create employment opportunities.
The sooner States and the Federal Government went back to agriculture, the better and safer for Nigeria’s sick economy. The level of farmers’ output in Nigeria is disturbing, and this is because of security issues that prevent the majority of farmers from going to the field. This has the unfortunate side effect of driving up the price of food. The government should intensify efforts to ensure that farmers produced at the appropriate time and value, given that there are several food systems for consumption by people, livestock, poultry, fish, and other animals, particularly those that place a priority on nutrient-dense goods and value chains. Nigeria’s food losses are a major concern. It has been observed that there are many different agricultural products available during the harvesting seasons. A focus on nutrient-dense products throughout the supply chain in target nations is needed in order to prevent food loss and waste as a result of the scarcity that currently exists. Better procedures for processing, distribution, and storage are needed, and recycling efforts should also be prioritised. Waste from the livestock can be converted into feeds through enhanced services, private sector engagement, and investment, especially within nutrient rich-value chains, and to improve the food systems. Other innovations promote value addition, nutrient dense agricultural products and prevent food loss or waste. Processes that extend the shelf-life of perishable and nutrient dense agriculture products:
The establishment of various agro-processing facilities that will increase food safety, decrease microbial contamination, and provide more options for farmer groups and smallholder farming households to earn additional revenue (e.g., value addition, washing, grading, and packaging). Technology that raises sanitary and phytosanitary food safety requirements is included. Flood is an overflowing of a large amount of water beyond its normal limits, especially over what is normally dry land. A flood happens when water from a river, lake, or ocean overflows onto the land around it. Too much rain or melting snow are the main causes of floods. Sometimes the soil in the ground can make a flood worse. This is because when rain falls, the soil usually soaks it up like a sponge. Many life and property were lost and most of the agricultural land are also on the receiving end of this problem, while the farmers cannot cultivate. It causes food inflation and this is very worrisome. There is an urgent need for the government to provide palliatives for citizens to ease hardship and suffering in the land. The agricultural market system refers to the system through which agricultural products reach our tables. Agricultural marketing is a mechanism through which goods reach different places depending on marketplaces. Due to the ongoing challenges facing agricultural production, there is a need for serious concern on agricultural commodities, which is said to be a matter of life and death. The cries of the peasant farmers are unheard. Due to their importance in the supply of agricultural commodities, the issue of peasant farmers is becoming worrisome.
Some farmers are unaware of the ways in which rainfall patterns vary. Rainfall is also intended to be a life-benefit, but many farmers are unprepared to make use of it. Additionally, planting is supposed to continue, but many farmers have no idea what to do. Numerous concerns, including insecurity which prevent farmers from farming, are among the many agricultural life obstacles confronting farming communities. As a result, there is a negative correlation between productivity and the prices of all agricultural commodities. Farmers are currently facing numerous production-related obstacles, and they must have a reason to think that they will overcome them. This is a major issue right now.
By: Igbiki Benibo
August 1977, Midland Bank, London, exchange rate for Nigerian naira was 2 dollar; neither was one arrested for currency trafficking, so long as you declared what you had in your possession. Today, 46 years after, the naira/dollar exchange rate is unbelievably high, giving cause for anyone to ask what is responsible for the current sad state of the naira. Neither is there any possibility of naira exchange for 2 dollar, as in 1977. During his period of travail and humiliation after serving as Petroleum Minister, my late friend and colleague, Prof. Tam David-West, had some sad taste of the shenanigans that have placed Nigeria in its current situations. Accused of being responsible for Nigeria’s economic adversity by taking a cup of tea and a gold wrist watch as a gift from foreign oil thieves, Tam David-West had to stay in Prison. His faith in Nigeria was not shaken, but what he told some of his friends in confidence point towards the country’s present experiences. A situation where a few persons could become millionaires without lifting a broom in service of the country, would surely result in adversities.
It was not enough that the Nigerian Civil War provided unhindered opportunity for the mineral resources of the Niger Delta people to be taken over, it was also expedient to cow and intimidate the elite from that zone. It was criminal for a Petroleum Minister to accept a cup of tea and a gold wrist watch from foreigners, but it was not wrong to give a few privileged persons allocation papers to own oil blocks and sell oil, without knowing what a drum of oil looks like. Was it wrong for foreign oil companies to say that they were working for individual oil block owners, rather than the Nigerian nation? Is it not true that the Nigerian economy is predominantly a mono-product one, namely: petroleum resources? Was the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) wrong to say that “Past military rulers, who brooked no opposition, perfected a cloak of secrecy in the award of oil licences”? Did official venality in the oil sector not degenerate to the extent that from the regime of late Sani Abacha (1993-98) our heads of state hijacked the petroleum ministry portfolio? Does anybody know who owns what in the oil and gas industry, especially the ownership profile of all oil blocks in the country?
With the Petroleum Industry Act and privatisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, can it be said that there is transparency, sanity or justice in the nation’s economic stronghold? Where there is public accountability, numerous allegations about frauds and bribes involving N2.4 trillion of oil money and the collection of $620,000, should have been investigated thoroughly and those found culpable penalized, to sustain public confidence. Rather, we complain about dwindling revenue, in the midst of plenty.One does not have to be an economist or an expert in monetary system, to be able to know that productivity is the basis of a sustainable wealth or robust economy. There is a slogan in some quarters that everyone has to earn his daily bread, rather than have it given free. Thus a healthy economy is one rooted in the concept of equilibrium, rather than a system characterised by sleaze, rent-seeking, patronage and secrecy in the management of public finances. That more than 80 per cent of Nigerians are currently groaning in poverty and agony arises largely from petroleum-related malfeasance.
One of the effects of globalisation which came into being about a decade ago, is the rise of a predatory and parasitic economic system, which places weak nations at the mercy of the strong. A situation where all individuals and nations are not equal and capable of competing on some equal terms and conditions, there are possibilities of predators and hawks preying on the weak and the gullible. Within nations there arises class, ethnic and interest groups competing for the monopoly of power and resources, thus creating rooms for crimes and corrupt practices. Oil wealth as the poaching ground! Perhaps, unknown to Nigerian leaders, the concept international community is basically an opportunity for the strong to take some advantage of the weak. Rather than physical conquest and enslavement as in the past, the modern trend is clever exploitation of the weak and gullible by the strong. With promises of wealth creation, nations that are productive look for foreign markets to sell their products, using e-trading antics. If one trading out-let or customer is able to bring in 7×9 buyers then with time a trading or poaching colony is established, with one millionaire smiling sweatlessly to the bank.
With Nigeria as an oil-producing country and as a consumption-loving population, a political economy that is parasitic and exploitative is established. The rule of such economic system is the enjoyment of the good life made possible by producers of luxury good, while local initiatives are stifled. There is a growing emphasis on academic learning and certification, and disregard for practical labour, with chose who have amassed wealth investing in the establishment of private universities. There are no jobs to create except buying and selling: e-trading. What is known as dollarocracy under the globalisation system is an unwritten agreement or understanding among strong countries that produce goods, to use their currencies or monetary system as the measure of productivity. Countries that import goods must use the dollar as the standard currency for payment for such goods. Even as an oil-producing country, the economic shenanigans have been to make Nigeria a consuming rather than an exporting nation, where existing refineries would not work. What accounts for that?
A dollarized economy is one which joins the dollarocracy as an unproductive partner, thus assuming the position of a weak partner, prone to exploitation. Sadly the exploitation is unmerciful because it makes use of internal cabal and rent-seekers. The oil idiom that those who dine with the devil must use long spoon, is full of wisdom in the sense that it cautious against a weak partner joining in the feast of champions. A weak partner is not only made to feed from the crumbs left over by the champions, but he is made to prey on his own constituency by opening economic gates to the insatiable champions. In this dollarocratic system you measure yourself by the standards of the champions as an unequal partner while the masses of your constituency bear the brunts and agonies caused by your audacity and pride. Nigerian political leaders must be paid in dollar standard while civil servants and producers of wealth must be paid not a living wage, but minimum wage based on devalued naira. The Dollar club is a group of champions meant to protect the global economy in the ratio of 80:20.
By: Bright Amirize