Dividends Of Unemployment
Originally here on 4/25/2009 6:19:10 AM
As attractive as this title might be, it is not fiction. Some may say that I am trying to be satiric but what I am about to say is fact…..As it is.
The unemployment rate in Nigeria is no longer news. Everybody is blaming the government for being non-chalant but that is no news either. The news is that some people benefit from the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria. Some thought it is the banks but I usually ask, is it not prestigious?. There is this business that flourish in Nigeria today that gives the proprietor absolute power to toy with graduates.
Years back, private schools of low category cannot boast of qualified teachers. Few of their teachers back then were TCII holders while the majority of their teaching staff were W.A.E.C holders. Today, it requires something close to an aptitude test before a graduate can secure a teaching opportunity in a private school. This aptitude test like procedures does not pose much problem to graduates; the problem is what they experience in those private schools.
In a certain private secondary school, the staff were subjected to a letter writing examination by the proprietor in order to measure their intelligence. The funny part of the whole thing is that the proprietor is not learned. It does not stop there; any member of the staff can be ordered to any degrading errand without notice and the slightest objection can get you sacked. There are some private schools that are owned and managed by learned citizens, but in such schools, the war is not between the staff and the management of the school but among the staff themselves. Most of them felt that they are demi-gods simply because they started teaching in the school before you. I once saw a lesson note of a teacher marked by a fellow teacher of such school, with funny comments such as ‘This page is untidy’; as if the lesson note belongs to her student. ‘Use adequate time to develop your lesson note’. This particular comment got me thinking; are you to write ten pages for a forty minutes lesson?. Does it stop there?, another teacher will be busy rating your exam questions and if you dare to complain, you will be politely warned to ‘bring yourself down’.
Graduates in other private schools have their own horrible experiences. These are graduates that were nursing high hopes of securing a job in Ministries, Banks, Telecom companies etc. The experiences of graduates and the fact that low class private school benefit from the unemployment situation in Nigeria may be difficult to believe but what you can easily digest is that many are nursing the idea of starting a private school so that they will also enjoy the dividends of unemployment in Nigeria.