EMMAWAD

 SHADES OF KINDNESS That woman. One would have called her a bully with such body structure. You could tell she hailed from the Niger Delta region, she had the speech swag called WAFFI. She had one of the biggest behinds I’ve ever seen and an understanding heart. Her voice was raucous but her laughter truthful. When I got on the bus, the first voice I heard came from her: “Sister you get change? Driver go para if you no get o abeg sidon if change dey your hand.” And this was her job as long I remained in the bus. She would gather moneys, give changes, direct incoming passengers on where to sit, making sure she was not inconvenienced. “Sister you know as e dey na, dis place too tight so make we three (instead of four passengers) just manage dey go like that until no space again for bus before we allow anybody sidon here.” Sitting side by side, we both laughed. Half way through the journey the driver was provoked by a teenage boy who hung on the boot of the bus trying to ...

 THE NEW MARKET PLACE When about 30 of us got into the interview hall, an HR official walked to the front and became a sales man right before our eyes. He sold us the one thing many of us did not wish to buy.  "We are all sales men; marketers in this world, else why do women apply makeup and men make money just to woo the other sex? We want someone to buy what we are directly or indirectly selling. Marketing is one of the best jobs in the world . Be proud of it! So my friends, we offer you the job of a loan officer. You will go out looking for clients who we can loan money..." Those still seated had sad looks on their faces . They probably had no fare to take them home. I spoke to one of them. He was coming all the way from Sango to Gbagada for a job of his nightmare. These were his last words: " Omo this na interview scam o. Na why I come spend my last card be this sha… God dey." We all wanted to be Graduate Trainees but oh well...We were being sold...

JOB FULFILLMENT It is a widely accepted belief that finding fulfillment on a job comes with the money you get - your 30 day paycheck. One cannot deny the fact that monetary rewards are essential. However, there are people whose frustration with their job has no ties with its monetary value. Some could not care less how much their monthly reward is. What they seek is the inner joy, peace and the drive that comes with knowing that you are attending your 9-5 job. Our example is not so farfetched after all. You walk into a bank on a sunny afternoon and despite the cool air from the air-conditioning system to calm heated nerves, the teller you are queued up with seems so far away and you could see the tell-tale sign of tiredness and frustration from the creased elbow of the attendant. She can’t wait to see you leave the hall as she nonchalantly takes the slip from you and offhandedly tells you to drop the control copy in a box meant for the purpose. You wonder what her problem cou...

THE ORANGE SELLER I had never seen an aboki so fair selling oranges. You could tell that his shelter for a long time had been under the sun. But the fairness was still obvious. He stood there under the bridge with his wheel barrow filled with unpeeled oranges, waiting for descending customers. I was attracted by the yellow oranges and so I walked up to him to sell me four for a hundred naira. And this was how I noticed many things about this man and in turn, learnt something from him. He had mastered the art of orange peeling after so many cuts on his fingers. He peeled them like they were his tender little babies; one in less than a minute. This was not one of those abokis you’ve seen selling fruits. When he asked me how many I wanted, his pidgin did not give him away to any tribe. He sounded like a man of no tribe and had the looks of a middle aged maybe from Chad. He still had his low dark hair with baby curls even though signs of baldness were becoming obvious. He had o...

  THE CIVIL SERVICE: A DREAM JOB OR NOT? The Civil service is not my dream job. It is not the kind of place I see myself working because if you look at it I see it as a place with a lot of redundancy; people just sit down doing nothing. It has never been my dream job but “dem say condition dey make crayfish bend.” I am not unemployed but it seems like I am... Generally there are civil servants who are doing well in their place of work. They tend to be very busy especially those working in federal agencies, like the FIRS, the Central Bank, NDIC, NIMISA and so on. They operate more like a private sector so there’s serious competition in those places so you have to be at your best; your A game. But in the mainstream of the civil service; both the federal and state, there is redundancy. People just go to the office, sit without doing anything and at the end of the month they take home peanuts. This is why you see many civil servants leaving their offices to do other menial ...

How Prepared Are You?  By Elisha Seyitan I am sure the title of my essay may come across as some damnation tract topic. Put your mind at rest for I am not one cut out for that though, not to say the concept of salvation should be undervalued. However, the muse was gotten thanks to a Facebook reminder I got earlier this week regarding a self mission I had undertaken in relation to my dreams. After gaining remarkable exposure in the course of my self-development last year, I had picked up interest in the field of marketing communication with bias for Strategy. The reminder resonated in me exactly 12 months later not because it was a reminder of what I had said but the fact that I am currently living my dreams slowly but steadily; surely it will end up shaking my generation amongst other things ( my conviction, remember to have yours). The cogent drive of my article is the attitude I put towards those words of mine. May I say that I did not just stop at expressing my inte...

PREJUDICED HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS We always have sweet names for repulsive human behaviours all in the façade of easy identification. Tribalism, racism, chauvinism, feminism, sexism, totalitarianism, subjectivism, egocentrism, and all other "isms" that have turned the world up-side-down. These prejudices are everywhere you go even deep inside our spirits, souls and bodies. It is so difficult for one to just live freely as created by God that compromise becomes the only moving train which could take you to your destination and sometimes it ends up being your final destination. Have you ever been told that you are too fat to be a front desk agent but would fit as a writer who’d work from home instead? Have you been asked to send a picture of your “real face” while applying for a Personal Assistant job? Have you been told that you’re too skinny to be a sales agent but should opt for modeling instead or too dark and short to be an usher or too plain to be the face of...

OWO NI KOKO (MONEY IS THE MAIN THING) One of my young customers walked into my small shop some time ago to collect his sewn wears and mistakenly stepped on another customer waiting to be measured by me. At first I just stood there watching the show: “Do you know who I am? I’m sure you never saw the four walls of a university that is why you cannot even say sorry after stepping on me with those cheap shoes of yours” “For your information I am a graduate, a lawyer for that matter, with a second class upper if your grandmother does not know of it. Maybe you are the one who needs to go back to school to learn some manners for you lack one obviously.” I did not know who the more frustrated customer was. Were manners now acquired from going to the university? These two men could not even pay the initial fee I charged them and there they were insulting one another; a show of educational power. And as we say today “who education epp?” I was not ready to even settle them both;...

CHANGING THE UNREALISTIC NARRATIVE OF THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION “Your education is your meal ticket in life.” Those were the words of my father and like every other child present in the socioeconomic jungle called Nigeria; we believe that education will solve our life problems. My over two-decades-and-a-half-life journey as a Nigerian, in Nigeria clearly shows that this view is totally unrealistic to the contemporary average Nigerian Youth’s reality.   After all, I have gone through the errors of reciting multiplication tables, to never understanding the reason why I have to take 16   subjects in Secondary school and settling for what my country; through Jamb, feels is best for me to study (I was lucky I loved English). Not to disrepute our educational system, but I must say that what is taught in our schools is totally different from the reality we meet outside. We were never trained to think like problem solvers, there was more reputation placed on grades rathe...