NYSC* ends and the Nigerian graduate is faced with a quiet dread: how do I get a job now? How do I survive if I don’t get a job soon? Living for months on end without a job is a fate many young university graduates in Nigeria have come to expect and accept. It’s just the way things are.
In the third quarter of 2018, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that there were over 20 million unemployed Nigerians. These figures are projected to rise with the growing spate of downsizing across industries in the country. This trend is being accelerated by the continuing onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, among other things. No one likes to imagine the near future as irreversibly bleak, but even the optimists are cautiously optimistic.
It’s no use saying that the world has changed and that many sectors of our economic and social lives are suffering terrible hits. True as these things are, they haven’t changed all too significantly what the lives of several millions of Nigerians have been. Things, economically, have been the way they’ve always been — few jobs, fewer prospects. Now, when people live so long amid a saddening state of things, they find ways to make peace with it. Still, though, what is depressing is, in the end, depressing. Being without a job, without money, without a way to take care of even your basic needs is not a battle fought and won once and for all. It’s a constant struggle. It’s a struggle to maintain for oneself some dignity, a sense of purpose, and some fortitude against despair.
Don’t think. It’s a way Nigerians say Don’t worry. Many learn to live by burying disquieting thoughts deep down. Thoughts about being broke. They just keep them from rising to the surface, force them to stay down. Music comes in handy for this. They listen and they dance, preferably in front of a mirror — seeing oneself rejoice reinforces joy. And many Nigerian songs are just the right music for such rejoicing. They dwell lightly on lyrics and reflection and heavily on groovy, jaunty beats. It’s made for dancing away your sorrows. Although there are times — such times cannot be helped — when even music cannot save one from reality, unemployed young people find escape in it as often as they can.
Community. Hell is other people, wrote Sartre. That statement may be true but our experience teaches us that the converse is also just as true: heaven too is other people. Nigerians, like many people all over the world, live in interdependent communities. A man is hungry and has no money, he asks his neighbour to give him some food; another finds his room too depressing and has nowhere to go, he goes and sits on his neighbour’s verandah. Unemployed people here find or build a circle of supportive people around themselves. Most times, the community is there for when a person needs to talk, an army of listening ears — and talking and being listened to does help. The community also helps them with job links, connections to lucrative opportunities, consolation in difficulty, money or sustenance to get by and the likes. Having such people around can blunt the sting of what, on many days, can seem like a purposeless existence.
Laughing. “Everything in this country is something to laugh about,” I remember telling a friend of mine. This tendency to make light of things and laugh about almost everything may be a little annoying, but it is understandable. Laughter, after all, is free, and in a country where many want for money, laughter is a priceless free gift. Comedy skits by Nigerians and targeted largely at Nigerians reach several hundred thousands of views on social media. People like to laugh here, and they seek humour in everything. Personal economies may be in shambles, but it’s not a completely hopeless situation if you can laugh.
Trying. Almost a year ago, I learned that a friend with whom I went to university had taken up work as a security man at a bank. I remember thinking, “That’s far beneath his qualifications”. I felt a bit of dismay and at the same time a bit of admiration. It was admiration at his unabashed decision to do whatever he honestly could to care for himself. Many young people I know do this in their own different ways: they apply ceaselessly for jobs, do whatever odd jobs they can find, start their own small businesses. All of these arm them against despair, give them something to rest their hopes on. They are unemployed, but not idle. And since they are trying their best, they believe something good is bound to happen for them.
Looking at the world in general and Nigeria in particular, especially in this period of the Covid-19 pandemic, one sees that unemployment figures and feelings of despondence are growing. Some experts estimate that Nigeria’s unemployment rate could rise to 33.6% (about 40 million people). Things may not return to normal in a long time, but people here are doing what they can to win against despair. Several millions have the attitude of John Ike, a barber in Ibadan, who said to me: “This corona is going to be here for a long haul; we just have to do our best and find way. Anyhow, anyhow, we must survive.”
*NYSC: National Youth Service Corps. A compulsory paramilitary scheme for young Nigerian graduates set up by the federal government in 1973 to foster the unity and development of the country. The graduates are expected to serve under this scheme for one year, usually in a state or community different from theirs.
Image credit: Adeboro Odunlami