By George Onmonya Daniel
The most difficult places to get a job in Nigeria, where jobs are exclusively reserved for the children of the most powerful are Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), Central Bank of Nigera (CBN), Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Dept Management Office, the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), State Security Services (DSS) and Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA). There are others but today we focus on these six.
As Buhari won the election in 2015, just shortly before he was sworn in as President, his daughter was quickly among the people recruited for the job at NDIC. A friend of mine, the son of a former Minister who was also shortlisted, told me one thing. “Nigeria is a big joke. ” Most of the people who wrote the aptitude test with him that day were his friends and people he grew up with at Asokoro and Maitama in Abuja.
Most Nigerian politicians have their children or relatives working in these juicy organisations. You cannot get in here by merit. When jobs are advertised it is just for formality to follow “due process”. These are organisations where the best of graduates with the best of grades are needed, but here in Nigeria it is the people with the best connections that get it.
Another organisation growing in notoriety for such is the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS). The FIRS has not gotten there yet. During recruitment, some people buy jobs for as much as N1.5m to N2m. In these other places you cannot even contemplate buying a job. The jobs are for people who are highly connected. Their children are simply shortlisted for political favours and political connections.
On 10th December, 2022, Sahara Reporters reported that Nigeria’s terrorists-linked Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami, has perfected plans to bring in his son, Abdulrahman, into the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as staff in a secret employment process, characteristic of most federal government agencies. Abdulrahman, Pantami's son, had been bragging about his employment around town and boasting that he did not need to do an interview before he got his “suitable position” in the NCC.
Why men who have benefited and looted billions from the Nigerian state, monies they cannot spend in two lifetimes, want their children in all the places where they feel there is enough money to steal in the future is bizarre.
Federal government jobs are highly sought by Nigerians because many say it is more secure than other jobs, it provides pension at the end of one's career and there is the possibility that one could get to the top and loot billions.