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A MIRROR OF HOPE

You forcefully open the double doors to your room to see your reflection in the large spotless mirror staring at you, as you try to avoid the Master. Your image kills the mustard seed of hope you have been trying to nurture – your eyes exhausted from too many tears. Your lips are chapped, and the glory of your skin is in the past - your beautiful skin as your mother would remark. You wonder if it’s because of its fairness or the hairless sight of it, or the chubby feeling when touched. And then you reckon the eyes of your mother are not yours. Your beauty lies in your freedom, you think to yourself. You affirm that you don’t belong here, not in this castle with grey walls, lofty ceilings, and heavy brown curtains. Not viewing ancient paintings of wars. Not on a bed for a crowd and certainly not wearing these expensive clothes too pure to smear. You recall the first day of your arrival at your new home. You were greeted by a servant who avoided your eyes as he bowed his head and sai...

WORK EXPERIENCE


WORK EXPERIENCE
Many jobs out there want people with experiences even at the beginning of their jobs and there are opportunities for these in school which is during your IT and during your holidays. Many people get to understand this later. Like I got this understanding after I attended a career seminar and this was after I had already graduated from school. I found out that I could have actually gained some experience working as a student during my holidays. Now it may not matter much to me because I’m a doctor but I think it would matter to those who studied other courses. Apart from that, many of our youths still have the mentality of “go to school, get good grades, good jobs are out there” and that’s a problem that needs to be demystified from their minds. Rather, people need to start looking out for what they want to become right from their school days. Now, going back to the government and the employers; because of course it’s a two way thing, the problem of this country is still the same. There is corruption and this is stopping development from happening because infrastructures are not developing and employers are not coming into the country. If there are no foreign investors coming in, people starting businesses, people cannot be employed. The government cannot cater for or employ everybody. What they need to do is create infrastructure and ensure development that will help investors to come. In fact, many companies have moved their headquarters from Nigeria to other countries in the past couple of years and this is because the environment is not good enough. Many people leave Nigeria and they get jobs easily outside the country because the environment is conducive for investors to stay.
Now the places where the government can invest is somewhere like health and education. In developed countries the government strictly takes responsibility for these things. Like the health sector in the UK is absolutely free and they make sure that they employ enough doctors. They have a quality control system even for hospitals that makes sure hospitals deliver enough by employing more staff. This means day in day out, there are job opportunities over there that even their own citizens cannot fill in so foreigners rush in to take these jobs. Now that is government taking responsibility. In their education system they are looking for people who will train to become teaching assistants because they don’t joke with the standard of their education. Here in Nigeria, most people attended private schools - primary and secondary. It is at the tertiary level that you see most people attending federal and state schools and if you think about it the private institutions are gradually taking over now. So everything still boils down to the government and the people realizing that the government has nothing planned for them even as students so they can start planning for themselves… That’s the way I see it.
A Shared Experience
Don't Forget to be Honest! 

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