Jackie Terhemba? is a jobless Nigerian who wants government to create jobs for Nigerians youths. According to her, “I am tired of jumping from one menial job to the other just to survive. The time has come for government to do something on employment.
I have an HND and I have been roaming the street of Abuja for over three years, doing all manner of odd jobs to keep body and soul together. I am the first child in? family of five. It was hell going to school because of the abject poverty I grew up with. I used to make garri in the village whenever we were on holidays?? and take to the market every market days. People come from all over to buy our garri. That was how I sponsored myself in school. My father died years ago. My mother used to sell ogogoro and other petty things to feed us. Growing up wasn’t funny at all, we would wear tattered clothes, run errant for people who came to the village from the city, so that they would give us used clothes and maybe some money when they are going back, two of my sister are doing house maid jobs right now. My plan was to get a job and bring them so they too could go back to school, but three years after my NYSC, I am still searching.
I have worked as a marketing agent for a cosmetic company, but they were paying us peanut. I had to leave it because the transport money I spend was more than what I was earning. I have worked in a filling station. The owner drove us away when thieves broke into the office and stole a day’s sales. I have applied to so many places that I have even lost count. I live in one room ,’face me, I face you “ house in Mararaba, where you have to queue in the morning before you take your bath. We use pit latrine in this modern age, but that is what I can afford. I have had to date ugly, old men just to make ends meet.
It is like my case is different because others that we finish together have got jobs. I have gone for deliverance thinking it was a spiritual problem, yet nothing has change. I have been praying and fasting. Men don’t take me serious now because they see me as a liability. I hate it when I beg men for money, but what can I do. The church has become my second home. I can’t go back to the village. I have managed to collect a letter from the legislator representing my constituency, but the organisation did not honour the note. I don’t know what else to do. I am fast losing my patience.
My mother is not helping matters as she thinks we pick money on the floor in Abuja. She expects me to be sending her money regularly as if I am working. She compares me with other girls who send things to their family. I don’t know how they do it, because I tried everything I could. I didn’t travel home for Christmas because I know that they will expect too much from me when they see me than what I can afford. I just mange to sent them what I have and spent the holidays indoors.
Why can’t our government create employment or provide a welfare package for jobless people like they do in other countries? For how long are? we going to continue suffering like this, I am tired, I don’t blame the people that put the bomb, I only wish they didn’t kill? poor people, they should have target the people? being jobless. I met jobless graduate everyday at the cyber café, and you hear all sort of stories, their experience, I know an HND holder that was jobless for ten years until recently. Even the government job he got, he had to use his diploma result. So now he is a sub-ordinate to people he is more qualified than them. It is not fair. Even if they will steal the money, they should invest it in Nigeria so that we can also benefit from it. If they open businesses here, we would have? jobs.
Young men are refusing to marry because of the economic situation. They are jobless and homeless so they are scared of adding more responsibility to their own. Parents are dying before their time because of lack of care. The children they spent their youths training cannot take care of them now that their strength is gone. What kind of country is this? They had better give me us work before we too join the bombing, but I won’t kill the poor, my target will be the rich.