THE 7 MOST LUCRATIVE JOBS IN NIGERIA (A SATIRE)

 

Are you looking for a job or contemplating a job switch? The piece below is a satire on the kind of jobs you should consider doing in Nigeria. Like all satires it is meant to be viewed as a constructive social criticism using humour as a weapon.

7.  Fast food joint/Restaurant Staff

According to an expert, 40% of Nigerians are hungry and go to bed on an empty stomach every night. If you are working in a fast food outfit or a restaurant you will always be guaranteed of having a stomach filled with food everyday. One of the perks of working here is that you will always have unhindered access to food meaning you will be eating your breakfast, lunch and dinner there and even have some take away for home at the end of your work shift. Do you know how much money you will save from buying food? The amount is priceless!

If you are a young single female it only gets better for you because you will be attending to a number of male customers most of whom will be young handsome single men who are looking forward to settling down. If your eatery is located in the neighbourhood of banks and other corporate institutions you will be receiving tips from the young corporate fat cats who will drop in there to order meals and snacks. Work on your smile, keep flashing those bright enchanting smiles and they”ll ask you to keep the change and even request for your phone number...you never know, this may lead to something good in the nearest future...like getting an engagement ring on your finger.

6.  Rent a Crowd business

Nigeria's population is over 160 million, out of this population a high percentage are unemployed, this is where the “rent a crowd business” comes in. Do you know that with little as 500 naira , you can hire people to do anything that you want?

Look for a place that will serve as your office/mobilization venue, give it a fanciful name and put up a sign that you are willing to pay a certain amount of money, let”s say 500 naira for an hour”s work. You will be amazed at the crowd that will show up at your doorstep. Among the crowd you will see area boys & area girls, bored children & adults, jobless & hungry nigerians, professional clappers & praise singers and political zombies & sycophants.

Look for a local politician and tell him that you can stage a rally for him, convince him or her to give you a certain amount of money as mobilization fee and you are good to go. Assemble your rented crowd, give them placards to carry, it does not matter if they can”t read what is written on the placards, the aim is to spread whatever message you want them to. When you are successful with the first rally, other politicians and interest groups will start coming to you to stage similar rallies or peaceful demonstrations for them and money will start flowing in.

You can then diversify into other areas like professional mourning services, where you will rent people who will cry louder than the bereaved at funerals and wedding attendees: people who will make sure that weddings held at churches with big halls are filled to capacity.

Start up now so that by 2015 when the crowd renting business will be in full swing for the general elections, you will have leverage over the many groups that will spring up to render crowd renting services to politicians.

5.  Professional Government Committee Member

Before now, being a member of a government committee meant sacrificing your time for a task that comes with hard work with little financial compensation, today the situation is different. Ever since our fedora hat wearing president came into power we have been practising committocracy (government of the committee by the committee and for the committee members). You really don”t have to do any serious work, all you have to do is to show up at the venue of the committee sitting and wait for your bank to send your sitting allowance alert sms. Your committee will be allocated a certain period of time to work and submit a final report, just show up at the committee hearings everyday and you are even free to doze off when the proceedings becomes too boring.

You can”t stay in your village and expect to be appointed to head a committee by the “oga at the top”. You have to go to Abuja and join your fellow “distinguished” nigerians to lobby for the position. When you are in Abuja, check into the Transcorp hilton hotel and lodge there (don”t say you don”t have money to pay for the luxury rooms, you can borrow from friends, when you are appointed to a head a committee you will always pay them back). That is where the power brokers go to chill off, hold their meetings and events and where you will have to strike an acquaintance with some of them. Also move around the posh and high brow areas of Maitama and Asokoro, you will find many of them here. If everything works according to plan, you will find someone who will lobby for you and ensure that your name gets pushed up to the “oga at the top”and you will finally a slot in the next committee that will be formed.

Now that you have been appointed to head the committee your mission has been accomplished. At the end the period assigned for your deliberations your committee will have to submit a white paper where you present your findings and recommendations to the government. You and your committee members know deep within yourselves that you have not really been doing the job well, so what are you going to submit?.....Don”t panic, you can pay someone to write a report full of technical jargon (Govt officials do not bother to read reports talkless of acting on them, as soon as they come in they are promptly filed away or swept under the carpet) or you can submit an empty sheet of paper as your final report. Its no big deal because another committee will be quickly set up to investigate the “remote and immediate causes” behind your empty sheet report. With luck, you can be even be appointed as a member of the new committee...Now your committee membership career is blooming.

4.  Dancehall music Artist

Dancehall music sells like hot cake nowadays. Go and look for a producer who can cook up danceable beats and hook up with him. You will then enter the studio with him to begin recording. Don”t worry if your voice sounds like a frog croaking, with Autotune audio processor your voice will be manipulated to sound like the voice of an angel. Your lyrics must be rhythmic and must include lines like “go down low, whine ur waist baby, i don hammer” etc. The lyrics should be limited to two or three phrases that you can repeat as many times as possible throughout the duration of the song.

Shoot a good video of the song and give it to Alaba boys to market it for you. In a short while you will “hammer”, the fame, money, ladies and guys will come chasing you.

3.  Baba Ijebu Agent/Forecaster

Thousands of nigerians play the Premier lotto game popularly called “baba ijebu” hoping to win the jackpot. People win various sums of money ranging from 12 million to 60 thousand naira. The game is based on people betting on a series of numbers and if they choose the correct numbers - they win! You can make money here as an agent. There are over 16000 sales agents in the western part of the country retailing the lotto tickets. However if you really want to make it big in this lotto business, you need to become a forecaster of winning numbers.

Migrate to Lagos if you are not resident in lagos because lagos city is the epicenter of the game. Tell the players that you are a prophet with a divine gift of predicting the sure bankers (winning jackpot numbers). They will not believe you at first, so you will have to look into your bag of tricks.

Find a lotto player, give him some money to spend recklessly and let him go round telling others that you predicted the winning numbers for him, the players will believe him.

They will start coming to you for predictions, then you will start charging consultation fees. As the number of your clients increase, double your fees. In a short time you will amass a fortune. When they complain that your numbers do not bring them the winnings, tell them that it is because they do not have faith. The gullible ones will keep coming while the rational ones will stay away. In a short while you will have to leave the town with your fortune or else your neck will be broken by angry and disappointed lotto players.

2.  Ex-Militant Amnesty Scheme

This one is for the guys who live in oil producing communities. Under the amnesty deal, militants who surrender their weapons and denounce militancy are drafted into the amnesty scheme for rehabilitation back into the society. So you have to become an ex-militant to benefit from this scheme. You can do this individually or collectively as a group.

Find at least 15 young men to join you and give yourselves fanciful names, you can use the title “General fire fire” as the leader of the group. Go to your village, organize a search party and comb everywhere for dane guns. Gather them together in the village square, get a camera man and a journalist to cover the event. Stand with your group and denounce militancy, announce to everyone that your group has repented from militancy and are ready for rehabilitation and reintegration back into the society. Never mind if those dane guns are rusty and have not seen action for years. Make as much noise as possible so that the news media will carry the news and draw the attention of the government.

If this approach does not work, get under the umbrella of a reputable ex-militant who is currently involved in the amnesty scheme and beg him to adopt you. If he does so, you become one of his boys. Your name will slotted into the amnesty deal. You will be flown abroad on scholarship to learn vocational skills. When you are back you will be placed on 75 thousand naira monthly salary while graduates roam the streets looking for jobs. You will then have time to flex and enjoy your life.

1.  State Governor

Become the governor of a state and you will have access to a bottomless purse where you can spend and splash money on anything and anyone that catches your fancy.