Our politicians have been holding us captive in their custodies in the name of "job slot" given to them by virtue of their influence on states or federal ministries and agencies. These politicians are empowered by the votes of the electorate. Yesterday, they were knocking at your doors to woo your votes, but, today you are knocking at theirs to help you get a job. The slave now became the master and vice versa.
It's obvious that recruitment into public offices is now monopolized and manipulated by veto of our politicians in power. Because our Nigerian situation has given us to understand that job application is now of two ways; the "due process" which is formal and the "who-you-know" process which is recruitment through the backdoors. Today, to apply for a job, one must apply through either ways to get the job. Even if you are qualified, you must succumb and summit yourself to those "manipulators", because qualified or unqualified has no meaning in the "who-you-know" process.
Today, your CV may not matters a lot, if you don't hold a certificate called "almighty certificate" and this certificate is the "master key" to all job seekers and is only issued by our today's politicians after you have been qualified based on loyalty and proximity. So, it seems like if you don't know a politician who will give you that almighty certificate your credentials aren't complete. More so, you will never enjoy that "certificate" unless you're a member to the politician's party. Painfully, we still think that by so doing our politicians are helping us. Some people even think that it's part of the primary assignment of a politician to find jobs for his people through the disturbed employment process. Now, in our situation, for instance, as a lawmaker, it's better to find jobs for your people than to rise a bill, pass a law or execute constituency projects. This is how rotten our political spirit is.
But why can't they allow the process unpolluted? We can still get the job without their interventions if they would allow the due process to reign. But they realized that this due process isn't suiting their political agendas.
Where one fluked a lucrative job through the due process only is seen as one of those impossibilities in the Nigerian labour market and surely people will surprisingly ask who got the job for you without that " almighty certificate?! Really, it has become almost impossible!
When federal or state ministries or agencies release advert calling for applications or recruitments they do so as a formality, nothing more than a placebo, just to avoid public complaints. But, behind the screen the procedure is over because the available vacancies are shared to our politicians and the like. What's more is lucrative jobs go to their families and friends, few to their sycophants and fanatics. This is where the phrase "without fear or favour" contained in the oath of duty is kicked out.
Whether through the due or any ill process you got the job isn't a storm in a tea cup, provided you can deliver the required service --- it's "Nigeria", where anomaly in the process of achieving normality is normal!
Something very bizarre here is, after we got jobs through these exploitive politicians, we then organized ourselves and also rallied others to form a support or campaign group for those politicians, sometime with donation to fuel their campaigns for power again. This is exploitation incarnate!
The pernicious implications of this malpractice of politics of job slot is, by utilizing this ill "who-you-know" process, political mafias or cabal have been planting their "boys" in public offices with the intent to harvest them as "bosses" of top public offices in the next few decades in order to continue holding the whole country in their pockets. When those "boys" became bosses, they became submissive, obedient and answerable to their godfathers who had planted them in public office but not to the govt, as such, they represent their godfathers in the govt instead of serving the interests of the masses.
Then, the whole govt now become like a puppet govt being remote-controlled by those cabal or puppeteers from their control room giving dos and donts to their boys who are bosses of top public offices. If not in the murky water of Nigerian politics, how could a boss of top public office be bossed around by a bigger boss behind the scene. In fact, this is the bad fruit of seeds of corruption that have been planted in the polluted employment process in Nigeria.
At the end, if we youth aren't wise enough, these exploitive politicians are, and if we continue to follow them the way they like, we wouldn't get out of the wood.