Looking for work, I wrote on this page some six years ago, has become one of the most dangerous occupations in Nigeriaa risky venture that is likely to cause harm or injury, even death.In that piece (August 19, 2008), I had employed the term occupation not in a flippant or cynical sense, but to reflect what had become the painful reality for millions of our young men and women for whom looking for a job had become a full-time occupation in itselfAs they pounded the streets and scoured the corporate offices and factories and farms and construction sites in search of work, I remarked, they were more likely to be swindled, mugged, kidnapped, sexually assaulted or exploited and abused in every conceivable manner by persons masquerading as prospective employers.I was reacting to reports in the July 14, 2008, editions of the national newspapers that dozens had died the preceding weekend at various centres across Nigeria in recruitment exercises conducted by the Immigration Service and the Prisons Department.For 43 of the 195, 000 applicants jostling for 3,000 vacancies, the race proved a fatal regimen, a journey of no return. A good many of them were trampled underfoot in the frenzied rush to gain a vantage position at the start; others died from sheer exhaustion. Hundreds sought hospital treatment for the injuries they suffered from the race.This grisly scenario, slightly modified, was reenacted in March 2014 at various locations across where the same agency was scheduled to administer written tests to some 520, 000 applicants chasing 4, 556 openingsThe 2008 fitness test of a 2.5 km run was replaced with an obstacle race requiring thousands of applicants who had converged on various locations several hours ahead of schedule to bulldoze, squeeze, elbow, claw, fight or otherwise find their way to the event through a single entrance.At least 19 persons, four of them pregnant women, were killed in the resulting stampedes. Hundreds suffered injuries.In a sane society, the responsible political official would have handed in his resignation even if the fiasco had not been compounded by so wanton a grim harvest. Elementary decency demands nothing less.But Abba Moro, the Minister of the Interior, who supervised this carnage, kept his job right up to the end of the Jonathan Administration, and would doubtless have continued to serve in the cabinet if Dr Jonathan had not lost his re-election bid. And Dr Jonathan roused himself to sympathise with the relations of the victims long after the carnage, handing them token compensation only as part of his cynical election strategy.The dangers to which job seekers are exposed are not always physical, however. Women job seekers in particular, are constantly exposed to moral danger, and sexual abuse, particularly in the banking industry. But that is nothing new.It goes back to the time of former military president Ibrahim Babangida, who was barely three years into his misbegotten rule when his palace intellectuals declared that Nigerias history would have to be divided into two neat periods: the era before Babangida (BB), when all was darkness, and the era that began with him (AB) when everything magically turned into sweetness and light.The more desperate revisionists among them even insisted that Nigerias history actually began with Babangidas coming. Before then, according to them, Nigeria had nothing worth calling a history.As evidence, they pointed to the wonders that structural adjustment had wrought all over the land cocoa farmers fling to their plantations in their personal helicopters, entrepreneurs, freed from the shackles of de-regulation, establishing flourishing businesses that created more jobs than there were people to fill, and banking institutions sprouting up in every neighbourhood like mushrooms after the first rains, glittering symbols of the boom.It was an ensnaring boom. You made a substantial deposit for a fixed period and collected your interest upfront, sometimes to the tune of 20 per cent. But this conservative approach was employed only by banks that operated from known addresses. The wonder banks that operated from one-room shacks, with bundles of bank notes piled from floor to ceiling and where records, if any, were kept in notebooks or even loose sheets, offered much higher returns.Many indeed were the patrons who rushed in, usually with other peoples money to cash in on what looked like a sure path to wealth and the good life it can buy. I recall a paymaster for the army who deposited the funds for the salary of soldiers in one of the wonder banks in the hope of turning it around within the month with a quick kill under his beltHe never got his deposit back. Neither did most of those who had rushed to cash in on the scheme.That was when the banks that operated from licensed premises and apparently in compliance with industry regulations hit upon the idea of hiring attractive young women for the most part. Entry salaries were so attractive that a job in the banks became the dream of most of our young school leavers.Their remit: to canvass for deposits. It was not explicitly stated, but the underlying assumption, to put the matter delicately, that the women among them will not hesitate to use what they have to get the deposits they need just to keep their jobs. This is the ideology of Mrs Warrens profession in George Bernard Shaws play of the same title writ small.The targets were impossibly high. Just how high is indicted in a letter I have before me at this writing:Dear Ms X:You will recall that upon assumption of duty, your commitment to drive a liability target of N180,000,000 (not a misprint) and a risk asset target of N63,000,000 (again not a misprint) within a period of six months.Even if she had a private mint, she would have found it hard to meet these targets, due to the scarcity of processing material, not forgetting the epileptic power supply After six months, she had achieved only 2 per cent of her risk asset target of N63 million.Management is extremely displeased with this abysmal level of performance and absolute destruction of value, the letter under reference states in severe reproach. Please note that you have up to 31stJanuary, 2015 to achieve significant improvement (60%) growth; otherwise your employment with the bank will be reviewed.The new target is no more attainable than the earlier one, but there you have it.I have heard of canvassers offering would-be depositors a higher return than the going rate at the bank and making up the difference from their own earningsin other words, subsidising their employers just so that they keep their jobs.There has always been a seamy side to banking. Putting young women in the way of moral harm and sexual exploitation, placing them in a position where they feel obliged to follow Mrs Warrens footsteps to keep their jobs, makes it seamier still.The post Banking and Mrs Warrens Principle appeared first on The Nation.]]>
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