19th March, 2014
By Peter Clever Opara
More than the morbid count that emerged from the ill-fated recruitment exercise of the Nigerian Immigration Services last week, the graphic illustration of nearly a million Nigerians packed like sardines in stadia and various public places all over Nigeria, is enough to shock and awe even the most paranoid government out of its shell. The picture of nearly a million Nigerians engaged in a deadly struggle to corner 3,000 jobs is a testimonial good enough to provoke far reaching national outrage. I even heard that millions of teeming unemployed Nigerian youths were made to apply for the 3,000 jobs and were extorted N1,000 each and after extorting over N6 billion from Nigerian jobless youths, over 500,000 of them were short-listed for the exercise that turned awry. This scenario is worsened by the popular feeling that most of those that will eventually get the placements in a fiercely unjust nation were not among the hapless legion that overfilled public places last Saturday and endured the elements and involuntarily went for each other’s jugular for elusive jobs. It is a national shame. It is a tragedy were this nation still alive to shame and reproach.
Someone even commented on the social media that in a normal country, the gory picture of famished Nigerians dropping like dead twigs at various centres of the federation to access elusive jobs is enough to kick start the much anticipated revolution. He said that the sites of that deadly exercise were apt centres for the start of a revolution that would address multifarious issues, chief of which is why millions of Nigerians should go hungry in the midst of plenty and why a few should continue to take liberty of the rest in an increasingly predatory state. But this is not a normal country, it is Nigeria, a hell hole writ large. It is Nigeria, with its ever tolerative inclination to horrible leaders, corrupt and ethically wrecked governments and a subdued and conquered citizenry, easily pliable to the antics and divisive tendencies of their tormentors.
It is a given that in a nation with its soul intact, the death of hapless citizens in the quest of securing unavailable jobs should provoke such a national outrage that is strong enough to rock the government to its very foundation. Sure, credible inquest should be mounted, heads must roll and officials, if not the government, that supervised this tragedy must give way. One can wager that nothing will come out of the issue because this is Nigeria; a land notorious for devouring its inhabitants. One can throw a bet that apart from the tepid, almost programmed, condemnations from the prodigal state officials and their cronies, nothing will happen until this tragedy is replaced by a more heinous tragedy in the racing Nigerian theatre of the absurd. A panel may be set up and if one’s reading of this government counts, some couple of other panels would be set to look into this tragedy until the issue is consigned into the borderless sub conscious of Nigerians. At the end of the day, no report would be made public and in a not so distant future, another set of Nigerians will die while pursuing elusive jobs from the Nigerian Immigration Services. It is a vicious circle that bespeaks of such leviathan Nigeria has become. It is a brutish enclave where life is short, brutish and nasty!
Have we forgotten so soon that a similar tragedy involving another cache of Nigerians happened in 2008? Have we forgotten that the factors and number of applicants, the circumstances that led to their death, the casualties, were almost the same as that of last Saturday’s? So what has changed except the addition of some more Nigerians to the swelling victims of the official profligacy that has become synonymous with governance in Nigeria? Pray, who remembers anything of the report of the 2008 incident? Who remembers any person losing his job for that ghastly tragedy? Who remembers any punishment meted out to any person for the kind of obvious negligence that resulted in the 2008 tragedy? So who will stick his neck to bet that this would be different? On what ground is such optimism rested? Who will bet that such similar tragedy will not happen in the near future? In a country, fiercely scripting its bloody history in blood-felt pens, in a country that betrayed no emotion that more than one thousand of its citizens were murdered by alleged religious zealots, the additional figure is so insignificant to make any impression in its cavorting leaders or even provoke significant emotion from its fatigued citizens. Were the mass killings in the North East, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and many other theatres of generalized bloodletting, strong enough to stop President Jonathan from engaging in vain gallivanting all over the country in the quest of securing another term for himself and his subalterns? The only assured lesson the country will eventually walk away from the present incident is that we are condemned to witness a repetition of such embarrassing tragedies.
But what should shock Nigerians more is the fact that in an oil rich nation, with myriads of scorched earth economic policies that target the famished citizenry for mass extortion, over a million people will engage in a deadly jostle for nearly 3,000 jobs. The pictures emerging from the tragic exercise have been trending in the media since that event; it is enough to jar any decent mind. It is enough to violate the sensibility of any living person. It is enough to speak loudly to the blurred and blunt sensibilities of the people that purportedly manage our resources. It is enough to set any government on the thinking paths on how best to arrest a pestilence that is threatening the very fabrics of over a hundred million Nigerians. One begins to wonder where the millions of jobs the Jonathan government has been boasting of creating are. One wonders who are the beneficiaries of these phantom jobs in the face of dehumanizing want that is ravaging Nigerians like a Teutonic plague. If nearly a million Nigerians turned out for a paltry 3,000 placements in the immigrations services and were subjected to inhuman conditionality as a condition for employment, pray where lies the hope for the teeming masses of poverty-ridden Nigerians that ogle for redemption?
But this is a country where tales of hair-raising public stealing and unimaginable corruption predominate public discourse especially in the past one year of our tragic national history. Here is a country where leaders bat no eyelid in plundering the common till and walking away unperturbed with the resources that would have bettered the worsening Nigerian sordid story. This is a country where official profligacy and cases of wanton looting have become such a common story that the citizenry just hiss and expect more gargantuan cases. This is a country where a litany of messy cases of official corruption struggles to displace each other on a daily basis. It is so permissive that even Robert Mugabe takes strong swipes on Nigeria for corruption! The multi trillion naira oil subsidy scam, the constant raiding of the excess crude account, the trillion naira kerosene subsidy scandal, the depletion of foreign reserves, the police pension fund case, the scandalous multibillion dollar oil theft scandal, the raiding of the SURE-P slush fund, the missing $20 billion case are just few cases of a system that is so ravaged by corruption and graft. It is so extensive that Nigerians have practically given up in the face of the complicity of the present government in these scandals. This, however, provides the background to such tragic instances where millions of unemployed Nigerians eagerly turn up for the few placements that are periodically put forth as jobs in a comatose system that is programmed to worsen the poverty crisis presently riling the Nigerian state. It is enough background for the sacrificing of long suffering Nigerians as happened last week so as to satiate the gods of graft and corruption where Nigerian officialdom worship. With a president and government that are strongly anchored on corruption and the employment of religion and ethnicism to divide Nigerians for their weird political interests, we are sunk to witnessing such tragic manifestations of the failure of the nation and its government, as the immigration services recruitment tragedy typifies.
•Oparah wrote from Lagos. E-mail: [email protected]