As I write this article, another sham recruitment in the states Judiciary would nearly have been concluded. Ten new Magistrates would have been sworn in. If not, then any moment from now, they will be. Recruiting for positions, whatever facets they may be required, has never been an easy task. It is not supposed to be. But recruitment into positions in Akwa Ibom State Judiciary has long been an exercise of oddity. For years I have sat watching the intrigues and chicanery, the clever roulette style arm twisting, the obtrusive greed and selfish brandishing that have characterised these exercises and, I can only say they have been underwhelming! I have never applied for a job in my entire life. Well, I have once. Coming straight out of the NYSC, and having been trained during the course of my service year as an underwriter by Leadway Assurance, I along with other young Corpers, were made to believe that the Insurance doors were wide open, beckoning on fresh graduates regardless what your discipline in the university might be. In a bountiful, hilarious and pomp ceremony just short of panoply, Leadway celebrated us in Kaduna. We were asked to apply in the senior staff category. By the time we were passing out I was walking like King Kong. I practically had my job in my strides, or better under my armpit. But it wasnt to be. The wait was inexorable. Interminable despair and despondence came knocking. Dreams dashed in smithereens bits. Ego deflated and wiggled aside. Certificates looking ordinary, and all grammer that came with it makes you want to puke. Frustrations turned into anger. Who the hell asked Leadway Assurance for a job? Has any of you ever felt like that before? Sometime in the intervening period, something came upon me and overwhelmed me in the most unspeakable manner. Mind you, I have never been ineffable! I was a job creator and not a job seeker. I was an employer and never an employee! It came very clearly. Like a thunder bolt! My entire being was rattled and engulfed in that feeling! I stood up in the middle of the night and shouted, ... business! I have never been the same since! As a little boy growing up in Ibeno, bird hunting was a calling to me. I knew every bird by their names. Not botanical names of course. Who cared what a birds botanical name was. But I knew the names. Most of those names were formed from sounds produced by the birds, or activities which the birds are best involved. I knew all the birds and also their characters. In fact, if the biblical David and I were trading jungle wisdom, you would have rather put your money on me. I was that good. I had slings made of lorry track tubes. We called them catapult. If I take an aim with a cast eye with my catapult I would not miss twice. My left eye was nearly permanently squint. Birds smelt me and scrammed. I knew them and they knew me. Over the years I developed a little skunk smell. Esau was only different for being so goddamn hirsute. Only God helped me. In those years when I was bird hunting. I had an encounter with a particular bird. Like most others I knew it by name, by now you would know that those names, just as this, are unprintable. Only in later years would I finally know that it was sun bird. This bird belongs in the family of nectarinlidae and are generally called the passerine birds, one of whose fifteen genera include the sparrow. In Ibeno, the genus come in a brown shade with a little white fluff across the neck. In my first English language school book, I met this bird again. It had a guitar under its wings. In all my hunting years I never came across any bird more cunning and irksome as the sunbird. It comes flying all the time very close to you. It perches close by. Never gets far. It waits until you take the aim. You let fly the sling in an expert daredevil precision. Many birds cannot escape you twice. But the sunbird, no! It drops flat in an apparent dying discomfort but not really. You move down to pick up the spoil. Not the sunbird! It was not hit. It skips only a few branches and perches again. Careless. Daring. Unconcerned. The sunbird. Never far off. You repeat the hunting technique, calmer and more resolute. This time, sure as hell it must be dead! The sunbird drops again. Tremulously. Delicately. Yet very alive. You are angry, your teeth set on edge! One little inconsequential bird! It leads you on. Miles upon miles into the thick forest or foliage depending where you started out. And it had better be foliage because on one occasion, I followed the sunbird and found myself right in front of a snake twisted about six rounds over a massive tree trunk. I was scared stiff. Hardly startled, blood drained from me. So scared I froze, which is what saved me. Snake and I marched each other in defiant glaze. Of mine, mostly stupor! Of the snake, I knew not how. I didnt know snakes. I only studied birds. Bird hunting is dangerous. All the while I wrote, I still called that bird in my local name. I only translated in English. Job hunting in Nigeria is a risky business. It is also frustrating and annoying. Just like hunting the sunbird, your intelligence counts for little. Maybe it does count somehow, but very little. Looking for job in Akwa Ibom Judiciary is far worse! A few years ago, not more than three in fact, positions for Magistrates were declared and advertised, so to say. But while people were struggling to fill out the forms, a swearing in was being conducted and nothing was ever again heard. Not very different in nature is the activities of the preceding weeks. To be fair to those who are finally appointed, or selected, this does not detract from their ability to perform at all. If there is a profession than can hold its head high in this country today, it is the law profession. Whoever comes out of the Nigerian Law School can hold their own anywhere. I challenge for a better tutelage in any profession except other than, perhaps, Medicine. But what calls for concern is a wanton system of progeny reproduction and tolerance for indecent avuncular benefactor open dance steps in a profession so generally held dear. What else can I say about a recruitment that started out with a general paper examination supervised by NJC, but ended up with an oral interview by the states JSC. How can the JSC select candidates in fair manner when you interview five people in one room, all seated together and answering, one after the other, the same question. No member of the panel has a pen or a blotter. Questions are thrown casually and indiscriminately. No notes are taken. One candidates improves on the answer of the other, and in that order! It is a complete show of shame, but it has been going on for too long. And the worst is that nobody seems in any little way concerned. Or any longer! There is what is called passion of practice. That is when a society gets involved in a particular wrong practice for so long that the ordinary people begin to assume it as right. But the truth is that no matter how long you practice the wrong thing, it cannot turn right. On the list of ten candidates who made it to the swearing in, one name is enough to put the entire exercise to disrepute! In any society, confidence is shaken when the right thinking men go away thinking that the umpire is biased. Most of what I put forward here may be written in an anodyne subterfuge, but the truth is that there no longer exist any confidence in the Judiciary when positions are filled out among jostling power brokers who seat in bars and benches, making sure that in between there must be a generation continuum. The worst is the idiotic masterful insolence with which these recruitments are thrust on us. It is apparent that the ten names must have long been drawn and agreed. It is painful to be used as a decoy or a smoke screen to cover for the penchant of a select few. It is masterful, to put the whole state through a misty hope that spirals away in a sunny black coal mirage! Wonderful! Meanwhile, my long drawn anger against the sunbird turned me into an aviary expert and gave me the first business acumen at a tender age. Someday I will tell you guys one aspect of that acumen. Have a fun filled, rain soaked, football playing weekend.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:49:13 +0000
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