774,000 Jobs Is For The Politicians, Not For Nigerians.

Once again, the federal government of Nigeria has found another way to siphon public funds into the accounts of some very few set of people in the guise of creating employment opportunities for non-ICT workers in the country.

There are 774,000 local governments in Nigeria and each of these local governments is to choose 1,000 artisans who would be employed by the federal government on contract basis for three months (September-December). While this is a laudable and welcome effort, yet it reeks of hidden agenda and manipulative intentions. 

These jobs were created by the federal government of Nigeria to ease the burden brought on artisans and non-ICT inclined professionals in Nigeria whose means of lively hood has been adversely affected by the pandemic. The federal government would employ these people for three months and pay them #20,000 monthly until things return to normal and they can be able to find their feet again. While this is a very good news, it is also very disturbing to know what the federal government exactly wants these people to do. Will the hairdressers among these beneficiaries make hair for the first lady and her retinue on daily basis or what? Or will they plait hair for Nigerian women free once they are recruited? 

Will the bicycles repairers among these beneficiaries repair bicycles for Nigerians free of charge for their state governments? When you employ someone, you want him or her to get something done, right? What then does the federal government wants done? I am sure even the federal government itself has no answer to these questions. This is another white elephant project definitely. Another half-baked policy. Even N-Power beats this hands down.

It is obvious that this is another way by the federal government of Nigeria to throw some money around without necessarily helping the citizens. Like an average Nigerian politician, the federal government wants to throw money in the air for three months, watch poor people scramble and fight over it to feed their families and once the money is exhausted, their hunger resumes. Nevertheless, the government wants to spend #52 billion on this. This money is enough to create a company or an industry that could directly employ about 2,000 or more people for the rest of their lives. These people have millions of family members who would benefit from this for many years to come and not just for a couple of months. But our government rarely thinks deeply.

Despite the shortcomings of this project, the most annoying thing about it is the recruitment process. State governors has 40 slots from each local government. This means that if a state has thirty local governments (like Osun state), the state governor would choose 1,200 out of the 30, 000 people that are to benefit from this program. Serving senators has 30 slots each from their states, house of reps members have 25 slots, a serving minister (like Chris Ngige) has 30 slots in every local government in his state. The list goes on and on. In the end, what would happen is that these politicians (the governor, ministers, senators and reps) would forward names of bogus (fake) beneficiaries to the federal government and those fictional artisans would start getting paid. Federal government would think that the beneficiaries are real people but in reality, many of them would be fictional. So the real artisans would end up getting nothing at the end of the day.

Lets just imagine for a moment that our governors, senators, reps and ministers will forward names of real people to the federal government, can a poor barber who knows nobody in the corridors of power be on the list? Definitely no. Unless you have some political affiliations, you will never end up on the list. As a matter of fact, the lists are already full as we speak. So who are we fooling? All a state governor has to do is to put forward names of 300 real people and 900 fake people and collect their money at the end of the month. After all, the physical presence of the beneficiaries may not be required and no one would want to gather 774,000 people together at a time in a place especially during this pandemic period. So we know their wicked plans! We Nigerians may not talk but we are not fooled either.