I guess this is becoming much more personal for me because I’m a graduate. Unemployment is a situation where someone or a group of people have no jobs doing. Investopedia defines the term, unemployment as “occurring when a person who is actively searching for employment is unable to find work”. Broken down, unemployment means you can work but you don’t have a job. Apart from inability to find jobs, some other people decide by themselves not to work. This set of people are the reason for this piece.
Do you know that there are people who decide that they are too lazy and would therefore not work? I recently heard about a new system where people dress up and act like mad people just, so they can get free food and money. I know. Its insane and you are thinking about how disgusting it is right? But, people do it. a friend of mine was narrating her experience to me some days back.
According to her, some people, guys especially pretend to be mad to get money from people. In Nigeria, as a mad person, you can get free food and even money. So, yea, this mad person goes around collecting food from people in the guise of madness. However, you can hear him making phone calls at night and speaking coherently. In fact, unlike other mad people, these ones make sure they sleep in neat places and never eat bad food or waste.
When I first heard it, I was shocked and disgusted. I mean, like, why would you do all this because you just don’t want to work? How do you wake up everyday a mad person just because you are too lazy?
Another set of people who choose not to do any jobs are the petty thieves. They exist everywhere. They are the touts at the bus stops that create an unnecessary association for collecting money from drivers, they are the riff raffs at the market place that charge you for standing at a junction or not putting your luggage in a part of the market.
As a country, Nigeria hasn’t totally dealt with unemployment as it comes. Different people and organizations have come forward to decry the lack of facilities and unemployment yet, it seems that every day, the numbers increase. Therefore, many individuals have taken up self-employment as the new solution. Hence, you see ladies who sell hairs, make clothes, sell shoes, are make-up artistes, sell wigs and the rest of them and you see men owning barbing salons, dry cleaning services, teaching online, running classes on things they already learnt in the university. Everybody has something doing in the country and if you as a graduate or a person who can work and has no job doing decide to sit down and wait for the government to start providing jobs for you, you will just live a miserable life and that will be the end of you.
So, get out there and beat unemployment. When they talk about the unemployed people, you shouldn’t be among them. Instead, you should learn a skill, monetize it and begin to employ labour. In this way, your earning and giving back to a society that gave you almost nothing to live with.
Have a lovely day.
Wink’s Corner
