The NIS Screening Charade: Questions Arising

After reading a lot of articles and listening to peoples’ personal account about their experiences at the recently concluded Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) Recruitment Screening, I decided to pen my angle on it.

In Nigeria today, unemployment is not a new plague, it has plagued us for decades. it is unfortunately rising the emergence of new tales of how unemployment is thriving in our society. Nigeria is a nation that is suffering in the midst of plenty, so many reasons are accountable for this, the top being bad leadership and governance. This single reason has birthed a chain of reasons among which are corruption, negligence and un-accountability. And somewhere in the maze of these reasons lies unemployment as an indirect or rather direct result.

It is very appalling that a random poll I did finds that out of a random 10, 8 fresh Nigeria graduates without jobs, and about 6 or 7 people are jobless 5yrs after graduation. I don’t mean that these people have ridiculously paying jobs, no, I mean totally jobless. ( Now, whatever reasons the 5yrs graduates are still without jobs is not a matter of concern or discuss in this article). Now, it is amazing that some graduates have jobs that in 10yrs to come they cannot earn up to 3M Naira.

Now with this partial but true picture in mind, imagine the kind of crowd that will turn out for a government paramilitary job screening? Imagine the kind of people who will turn out for the screening? If we could mention a few, we would have fresh graduates, stale graduates, job change seeking graduates, age lying graduates and so on. Now, imagine the emotional atmosphere at such a gathering? Excitement, hope, fear, frustration, shame, even regret, paranoia, anger, and so on.

For the picture painted so far, what could anybody expect to happen at a gathering of such people? The strong,the weak, the hungry, the over fed, the spiteful, the mature and immature minds all gathered. As for me I will say anything can happen, and a stampede cannot be ruled out. More questions arising. Is it that the NIS could not foresee this kind of gathering? Or they did envisaged it, but neglected the possibility of a disaster? The NIS haven seen the number of people that applied for the job, did not conduct the screening in batches on different days, if not to avoid a stampede, but for an effective screening process. This is where the credibility of the screening comes to be questioned.

Just yesterday, a family friend informed my wife of having collected appointment letter for the said job screening days ago, before the screening day. Nigeria!
The NIS! Who called for the gathering of shame? As for the applicants. How much does orderliness cost? A little patience, a little wait. What did they feel seeing such a large number of copies of themselves everywhere at the venue? Did they see hope or frustration?

What are we doing to ourselves as a nation? Where is this country heading? Imagine Nigeria a country is a home video, what end would we predict for it. Daily we push ourselves about and exploit the vulnerability of the weak amongst us. We desperately need to refocus as youths of this nation.

That gathering at every center of the screening nation wide is the gathering of Nigeria’s future – the Nigerian youth. What have we become? A set of people who have become dependent and vulnerable, or a set of people who need to wake up and stand for accountability? As for me I wish the gathering were of the later.

The deliverance of this nation from our present woes lies in our ability to know that nobody will come from space to deliver us. Shying away from our responsibilities as the governed in the aspect of standing for our rights and demanding from our leaders per time what they are doing with our collective destiny as a nation.

Oluwaseyi G. Abidoyee