UNDERSTANDING THE NEW JONATHAN JOB FORMULA I wanted to know how the new Jonathan job-creation formula works. So, I called Reuben Abati in Aso Rock and he explained it to me. I said, “Assuming I lost three members of my family in the NIS stampedes and, by the grace of the president, I had nine job slots but I was the only family member left who needed a job, what should I do with my eight remaining slots?” Reuben said, “Here in Aso Rock, we don’t work on assumptions or presumptions. We work on facts. So, do you have it for a fact that you lost three of your relations in Abuja or Port Harcourt or Benin?” “No, but my friend Mesopotamia does. He lost two brothers and a female cousin. What should he do with his eight spare freebies?” “He should give them to his friends.” “He has no friends who need jobs. They are all riding motorbikes for a living, and they are all happy with the daily flow of cash.” Reuben suggested, “Then, advise your friend Mesopotamia to advertise his extra slots in the papers or on the Internet. Before he even breathes, he will be drowning in applications.” “Oh, I see. Can he demand a N1000 application fee from his applicants?” Reuben yawned and said, “It’s up to him. We are not going to dictate to him how he uses his own property. However, if he wants to emulate the president by splashing it around, we are not opposed to that either. It will add to the beauty of the Transformation Agenda. But there is something he can never, and must never, do: he cannot give the extra slots back to us?” “Why can’t he do that?” I asked. “Because what we give we don’t take back. It’s against policy. The president is not a money lender who gives with one hand and takes with the other. His compassionate heart is too tender for that.” I told Reuben, “Something else bothers me about the new presidential job-distribution formula – which is great and grand, I might add. How do you verify that someone is telling the truth when they say they lost a sister at the NIS melee? In Nigeria, I am not aware we keep records of family data. So, how are you going to confirm that my friend Mesopotamia was, in fact, the cousin to that dead woman we all saw in the morgue at that Abuja hospital? It was all over the Internet.” Reuben smirked triumphantly and said, “As Michael Jackson once said, ‘as simple as do re mi’. Here is what Mesopotamia should do: he should bring a picture the woman took when she was alive, especially one she too moments before she was trampled underfoot inside that stadium. Mama Peace has invited face-recognition experts from Dubai who can spot cousins just by placing the picture of a dead one against the face of a live one.” “What about DNA analysis, would that not be more accurate than mere facial comparisons?” “Our DNA experts have all relocated to India, and, besides, all our DNA equipment is faulty. And, for the life of me, who wants to go through the tedium of drawing fluids from dead bodies? The smell of death gives everyone here the nausea.” I said, “You have it all figured out then?” “Those of you who say Goodluck Jonathan doesn’t think before he blinks have now been proved dead wrong.”
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:42:46 +0000
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