EMMAWAD

THE ROADSIDE MECHANIC My brain was never interested in school work. Sometimes I wish I had listened to my father and many other relatives who wanted me to have an education. I remember getting flogged constantly in school for failing one subject or the other. I honestly tried my best but it never was good enough.  SO I TOOK TO MY FATHER’S ADVICE: “Okoro, since you no wan go school, oya go learn handwork.” Being a mechanic like other jobs, is not easy. The curiosity I have for it however makes it interesting and I try to improve myself every day. I started my apprenticeship in 2005, at the age of 18. Ah! I suffered during those years. Frequently my Oga would ask me: “Okoro, you sure say you get head for this work? No come waste your time here o…” But I kept on for five years amidst all the setbacks, insults and discouragement from many people around me then. Now I am my own Oga! For me, speaking and trying to convince my customers tends to be one of the difficult as...

I was weighing 43 at that time. It was not easy balancing school with work. But I needed money. The money my parents were sending was not covering up my needs. I needed a backup and that was why I took a job at an African restaurant, owned by a Nigerian couple back then in London. Jobs like this were reserved for students or for the undocumented. I could not babysit because the timing would clash with my class hours and that was why I settled with washing plates in this restaurant after classes.  I had done this for a week and could notice my fingers fading away but I didn’t mind at all. All I pictured was my monthly pay. The next week; on a Wednesday, after classes I resumed work as usual. I had washed the first round of plates and then I heard the voice of my boss (the wife) saying: “Favour, you will be the one pounding yam from today. It is part of your job description…”  That voice echoed in my head and it still does till today. It echoed when I nodded in ag...

WORK EXPERIENCE Many jobs out there want people with experiences even at the beginning of their jobs and there are opportunities for these in school which is during your IT and during your holidays. Many people get to understand this later. Like I got this understanding after I attended a career seminar and this was after I had already graduated from school. I found out that I could have actually gained some experience working as a student during my holidays. Now it may not matter much to me because I’m a doctor but I think it would matter to those who studied other courses. Apart from that, many of our youths still have the mentality of “go to school, get good grades, good jobs are out there” and that’s a problem that needs to be demystified from their minds. Rather, people need to start looking out for what they want to become right from their school days. Now, going back to the government and the employers; because of course it’s a two way thing, the problem of this country is s...

WOULD YOU SELL FOOD AS A GRADUATE JUST TO SURVIVE? My name is Prisca, a graduate of Biological Sciences with a second class upper division and I want to share my job hunting experience just after I was done with service.  I was desperately looking for a job so I kept applying and going for every interview I was called for.   I went for an interview not quite long ago. It was a sales manager position advertised online. I saw this as an opportunity to meet new people and be more outspoken and to network. So I applied; forwarded my CV. Afterwards I got a mail from them saying that out of the 50 people who applied for the job, I was opportune to have been selected. This made me very happy and I didn’t mind borrowing money to go for the interview at Ojota. When I got to the location I was not sure it was the right address even though I could clearly see the house number.   I asked a lady; just to be convinced, about an interview taking place there and she replied...

 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...