Her story, heroic but sad, reflects the experience of thousands of Nigerian youths whose potential and life opportunities are stunted largely because of the ineptness, lack of vision and venality of successive administrations over the years. We refer to the unsavoury tale of Gloria Effiong Ekanem, a graduate of Animal Science from the University of Calabar who has had to resort to selling sachet water, soft drinks and biscuits on the streets of Uyo in Akwa Ibom State, 25 years after obtaining her university degree. According to a feature story in the Nigerian Tribune, Gloria, a 43-year-old mother of four said she took to hawking wares on the streets and on campuses of higher institutions to support her husband, a civil servant, in providing for their family.
There are large numbers of graduates of our higher institutions who remain unemployed for several years after leaving school because of the protracted economic crisis that has made it impossible for an otherwise tremendously endowed country like Nigeria to provide jobs for her teeming youths. They are the victims of the large- scale corruption, monumental cost of governance, avoidable waste and inefficiencies that have been a common feature of governments at all levels in Nigeria.
In Gloria Ekanem’s case, she has been unable to secure employment after graduation since the commencement of this democratic dispensation in 1999. What then do the often-touted ‘dividends of democracy’ mean to her and thousands of others in her situation? She told her interviewer that she wrote the recruitment examination for her state’s Fire Service but was not selected despite coming third. In another institution where she sought employment, Gloria said she was asked to pay N300,000 to get the job and rightly wondered where an unemployed person could raise such an amount. Again, these are hindrances faced by scores of qualified applicants in the country in their quest to be gainfully employed. When she eventually got a teaching job in a private school, she was forced to quit because of her paltry monthly salary of N20,000 despite her being a graduate, which was not reflective of the cost of living.
Gloria’s story is, however, heroic because she refused to give in to despair, use her situation as an excuse to indulge in social vices or engage in criminality. Rather, armed with the sum of N10,000 raised for her by a relative, she started her sachet water, soft drinks and biscuits hawking business in 2022, enabling her to contribute to her family’s upkeep. Beyond this, she also engages in farming by the side, which helps to reduce her family’s expenditure on food. In her words, “I have a plantain farm and also a pineapple farm. So, most times, I make ‘gari’ from my cassava farm and keep in the house for my family and that is how God is sustaining us. If not, it would have been very difficult to feed six mouths with the increasing price of ‘gari”.
Gloria laments that the degree of modest profitability from her petty hawking business has declined sharply, especially given the current high inflation rate. According to her, “Fuel is the major problem we are facing in this country. If the price of petrol can be reduced. things will become better. The government should do everything possible to reduce the fuel price so that poor people can afford basic food in order to survive”.
Source: The Nation
