Just the idea and concept of any kind of meritocracy is offensive to Nigerians in general. Doesn’t matter whether they are from Mushin or Maitama; doesn’t matter whether they’re a politician or a vulcaniser.
Nothing can be allowed to be sacred and above the Nigerian disease. EVERYTHING must succumb.
Nigerians
Common Entrance exam cutoff to enter Unity Schools: give Yobe an entry score of 2, and give Anambra an entry score of 139. The defense is that I’m helping my disadvantaged kinsmen get into school.
SSCE Exam: Organise a cheating program for your students to boost your school’s stats. The defense is everybody else is doing it, so I’ll fall behind if I don’t do it.
University VC selection: Start playing indigene vs. outsider politics and destroy the meritocratic sanctity of academia by promoting underqualified indigene to the very top. The defense is that I am helping my brother by stopping those [insert group name] from taking over.
Civil service employment by Nigerians: Ensure 89% of all yearly intake is named “Mahmoud, Yahya, and Zainab,” whether they are qualified or not. The defense is that I am promoting the interests of my brothers and stopping those [insert group name] from taking over.
Private sector employment and promotion: Hire/promote people based on who is sleeping with you and whose father is an Ikoyi Club member. The defense is that’s just how it is, and those Ikoyi Club connections can be useful.
Election: Prevent people from voting, snatch ballot boxes, kill voters, and ultimately install an incompetent, unelected buffoon. The defense is I am getting paid a few thousand peanuts to do so.
Local youth sports team selection by Nigerians: Select athletes/players whose parents pay bribes, and leave out better ones without the means to pay bribes. The defence is shey Coachie no go chop?
National youth sports team selection: Select only athletes/players with godfathers and connections while sending away David Alaba (this actually happened). Also, make sure to select as many of “your brothers” as possible.
Entertainment promotion: Nigerians Cast upcoming actresses based on who sleeps with you. Invest in the most talentless upcoming artists who can’t hold a note or identify what a treble clef looks like because they are desperate and loyal, and can be useful as drug mules or avenues for laundering illicit money. The defense is why is anybody complaining? They should stop being broke haters, go and promote their own artists, and leave your omo ope alone. Enemies of progress.
Media and Journalism: Hire and promote journalists based on who sleeps with you; assign big stories to office pets and sexual partners; open opportunities and award nominations only to those in your cult, with the net effect of driving the best people out of the profession altogether. The defense is “Haha you can’t prove it, fuck you.”
As in, nothing in that country can be allowed to be meritocratic. Nothing at all. Medicine? They appoint Chief Medical Registrars based on their state of origin and their relationship with the governor.
Aviation? Nigeria Airways once had dozens of non-flying pilots on payroll, Nigerians earning the same as its flying pilots because they were friends with one perm sec here or Commodore there. Today, courtesy of
@hadisirika
, the NCAA now has dozens of “safety inspectors” named Farouk and Mohammed who cannot correctly identify parts of a plane – I wrote a story about it.
And the tragedy is that the same people who will complain about one part of this grotesque system will defend another part of it without irony because as is always the case in the minds of Nigerians, the group outcome is always somehow divorced from their personal choices.
That’s why you’d support a drug dealer stealing an election he lost pitifully, then later on wonder why the world beyond Seme treats you with the disrespect that it does.