On 1st January, 2021, President Mohammadu Buhari said in part, 'The year 2021 will indeed be a year where we will work to reinforce the hopes of fellow Nigerians in the vision of a united and progressive Nigeria. This administration would continue focusing on delivering key strategic priorities under our "SEA" - (security, economy and anti-corruption) Agenda.' These have been social issues that posed common problems to Nigerians and most administrations have attempted to tackle them. However, it appears to me that what Nigeria lacks are sincere leaders who could match their words with their actions. President Buhari assumed office in 2015 and those issues of insecurity, poverty and corruption have not abetted and I wonder what sincere efforts this regime has undertaken to eradicate these menaces.
On 1st January, 2019, I was appointed as an officer of the Local Government Service Commission in Abia State. It took about two months to eventually get posted to one of the local government councils of the state. In due course, I was assigned to an office and work was to start, yet nothing happened. We were crammed into a general office that we frequented to indicate our attendance and availability for the job. There was no Orientation exercise from the Commission in Umuahia nor at the local Council headquarters. We waited for the dust to settle and for many months we were mandated to enroll and participate in a biometric attendance check, daily without pay. After months and in February, 2020 we received our first salaries for December 2019, of roughtly $100 monthly in exchange. This is gross. The salaries have been coming two months late since. The last being for October, 2020 received in January 2021. Before you give me a lecture on humility and long suffering, let me pretend that this is a sane audience that I'm addressing and tell you the prognosis of this ailment, which this job has become.
The job advert went on air in January, 2018 and I sent in my application that month. In February, I was shortlisted for a test and I travelled to Umuahia for that. In March, an oral interview was conducted for the candidates in three zones of Abia State according to local government of origin. We awaited the results of the interview for months. Eventually, fillers came through that some agents of the Commission were demanding N250,000 for a slot. Some parents paid for three slots. Many paid N200,000 and others paid N150,000 for a job offer. My question is, how would President Buhari fight insecurity, poverty and corruption when a government machinery is demanding so much for a job that pays salaries two months late? Who's fooling who? For the record, I didn't pay for my job offer but I awaited to be given this space through thick and thin. It wasn't a transparent exercise to be honest.
What is CORRUPTION? Nigerians love to throw words around or as we say blow big grammar without giving much care to their meanings. Corruption means dishonest and illegal activities. It is fraudulent conduct by those in power, usually involving bribery. It's quite charming that those who claimed to have paid or bribed their way to a job are angry at some of us who didn't pay for the same job. I need to understand whether the fight for corruption is an IRONY. Are we actually asked to thrive through corruption. Honestly, bribery moves mountains. It opens doors of opportunity. It could make a charlatan your leader and you the technocrat a zombie.
The job has been most frustrating. I have pictures of my ramshackle office that I was asked to inhabit for months. The walls are moldy and I have no inkling what disease(s) I am contracting at the moment. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, we sat in those walls and had to contend with dilapidated infrastructure. Nigerians don't like one to complain about evil being done to one. I had asked for many months what my schedule of duty was with no favourable or positive response. Being a graduate doesn't entitle me to engage myself in any duty by choice. I have asked up to the Head of Service what I was supposed to do. I don't think that all it takes to be a civil servant is a bank alert at the end of the month, for the last two months. I don't know the source of the salaries. Maybe I'm getting paid by a detractor or an enemy. Maybe I'm supposed to be a part of a prostitution ring. Maybe I don't have to do any work for that to be counted against for me whatever reason.
Last week, we were asked to indicate our interest for confirmation of our appointments and I was aghast with confusion. I was supposed to be happy since these last years of dishonour have ended. But really? Should I really be happy that I was assigned a moldy office that was in ruins to run a career? Should I be besides myself with joy or happiness that I had to hoe at work in order to keep the premises tidy. I had to come in my work clothes and get untidy at a place without running water in the vicinity. What was going on? My office doesn't befit prisoners.
Is Nigeria running a civil service or a cabal? Do I have to believe that there's sincere effort to fight corruption or are we enthroning BOTTOM POWER as the de facto modus operandi of the Nigerian civil service? Bottom Power, in this way, is getting (financial) favours because of one's sexual relations with other people. This ailment cuts across the three tiers of civil service viz the federal, state an local governments. People do not go to work in order to show off their connections. I was posted to Governor Okezie Victor Ikpeazu's local government of origin of Obingwa. It has been one act of insolence or another. Civil service is becoming a social club for camaraderie, witch hunt and ignorance. This is showing a pattern that I am experiencing everywhere even abroad, where a charlatan is set up to head me.
What are the criteria for leadership? Bullying, backbiting, fraud, charlatanry, forgery, ignorance, promiscuity, intimidation, bribery and corruption?
While we were documenting our credentials for employment, we were asked to sign an agreement to secrecy. I understood that civil service had classified government information to keep discreet. This wasn't supposed to be a concerted effort to champion and authenticate falsehood. This is not a place for people to show themselves irrelevant to Nigeria. Those who do not think that they belong to the Nigerian civil society are welcome to relocate to the forest where they rightly belong.
While Nigeria continues to fight corruption, there must be sincere officers in politics and the civil service to make it a reality. It is not compulsory to use the Nigerian civil service to settle scores. If that mustn't be the case, then let's continue to sing the Anti-Corruption diatribe till doomsday. Did some people rather believe that: Firstly, that was no security problems in the country, that the economy was booming and that Nigeria did not have a corruption problem? Perhaps so, for the few who are celebrating their
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