It is the joy of anyone who has gone through the four walls of any higher institution of learning to graduate and find a descent job that speaks of and represents the image that such opportunity should ordinarily present. Ordinarily because that is the way it should be. And truly there was a time when it was a thing of joy. The days when in this great country of ours companies scout for brilliant graduating students from the universities. And even if you were not one of the graduates that got a job at graduation, it wouldn’t be difficult to or long before you got one. Those were the good old days.
Times have changed. The companies are longer waiting at the doors of the citadels of learning to offer automatic employment to graduates irrespective of the grade they graduate with.
This situation has become so frustrating coupled with the state of the economy, that graduates are now prepared to do anything; any kind of job they can lay their hands on so long as by it they can keep body and soul together not minding how little it may pay them.
Let us look at 8 of the disgusting jobs that Nigerian graduates do…
1. Driving
Gone are the days when driving was a job reserved for those who didn’t go to school beyond primary or secondary school levels. These days even those who have PhD are in the scramble for driving jobs. And the situation is even made worse with employers both individual and corporate organizations stipulating that drivers must be graduates. Part of the driving they engage in is driving public transport vehicles. Disgusting indeed you will say.
2. House help
I imagine you will say this is even more disgusting. House help? Yes, house help. Nigerian graduates now take ‘joy’ in working as house helps. The unsavory state of the economy has forced them to stoop so low ‘willingly’ to accept jobs as this.
3. Janitor (Cleaners)
Some of the workers we see cleaning the floor in the banking halls and some other corporate companies are graduates from some Nigerian higher institutions of learning who have resigned to ‘fate’ because they ‘think’ they don’t have hope.
4. Baby Minders (aka Baby Sitter)
It is not wrong to be a baby care-giver if that is what you choose even as a graduate, but many Nigerian graduates take to this line of job not out of conviction, but out of compulsion.
5. Roadside bean cake sellers
Imagine a graduate who has gone to school and spent between four to six or even seven years (depending on the course of study and incessant strike actions by lecturers) studying now after graduating frying yam and bean cake by the roadside.
6. Security service (Gate men)
I am sure you meet them everywhere you go; at the entrance of the bank premises and other organization. You may even have them at the gate to your own house. They are mostly dressed in uniforms, sometimes looking like secondary school students. This is one of such odd and disgusting jobs that Nigerian graduates engage in today.
7. Bus conducting
If you are used to taking public transport, you have an idea of how an average bus conductor in Nigeria looks and behaves. In proper description, he is an ‘area-boy’. But what is painful is that when you hear some of them tell you their stories, you will almost weep for Nigeria, because these guys speak good English. But that is the situation Nigeria is in today.
8. Street hawkers
In the early/late eighties, street hawking as we know it today was not common. But as the economy of the country dwindled more and more, and Nigerians graduates began to be choked by the lack of employment opportunities anything that could offer a safe landing became an option. Hawking on the road during traffic then gained more prominence because it was no longer a job meant for those who didn’t go to school, but also for those who did, but had no proper jobs after leaving school.
Those are 8 of the disgusting jobs that Nigerian graduates do. However, all hope is not lost if Nigerians who have taken the pain to go through these institutions will start challenging and tasking their brains to come up with solutions, then we will have lesser graduates taking to these kind of odd and disgusting jobs that demean their personalities and status as graduates.
