The Whispered Recruitment Table In Nigeria: When Jobs Speak Only In The Language Of Bloodlines 

— Juicy Jobs Planted for the Elites’ Children–

The morning comes slowly over crooked rooftops, its light falling on tin houses and broken roads.
The fisherman pulls his net from the water, but it catches only old leaves and forgotten plastic.
At the market, a mother sells pepper and yam, counting coins that will not be enough for bread.
Their children walk to school with hungry stomachs, holding onto dreams far bigger than their world.

In the high halls of government, there are jobs — soft chairs, polished tables, sweet air.
But their doors are locked with golden keys that never leave the pockets of the elites.
They call it recruitment, yet it is whispered only to the sons of marble houses and the daughters born under diamond lamps.
DPR, NNPC, CBN, NIMASA, BOI —
these are offices fenced high, where only elite children are allowed to grow.
FAAN shines like a ripe fruit, but the poor man’s child may touch only its shadow.
FERMA stands tall, yet it waves only at the bloodlines it knows.

For the common man’s children, there is the Army, the Police, the FRSC, the Civil Defence.
Public offices open, yet narrow at the top,
for the ladders have missing rungs
and the highest steps are guarded with family names.
They join the Correctional Service,
but are still locked in cages of poverty.
They wear uniforms under the hot sun,
while the elite’s children wear suits in cooled air.

The poor man’s certificate sits folded in a wooden drawer, gathering dust like an abandoned prayer.
In Ajekunle, hope hangs from clotheslines between two rusty shacks.
In Igbudu market, the traders speak quietly, saying how their children applied for CBN, NDIC, NCAA, NCC, PTDF and never heard back.
Even EFCC wears its secret coat, calling only elite names already written in its book.

The rich grow heavier on secret harvests,
sipping from offices like sweet palm wine, their laughter spilling into marbled halls.
The poor chew on bones of promises, their dreams tasting of smoke and abandoned fields.
They watch public recruitments like open wells, yet find only dry sand because the water is taken up by hidden hands.

Night falls like a thick cloth over the city,
covering the fisherman’s empty net
and the trader’s unsold goods.
The trader’s son sits outside with his certificates in his lap, looking up at a sky he cannot reach.
He wonders if tomorrow will ever bring
a letter meant truly for him, and not just the chosen sons and daughters of the elite

Yet even in this darkness, in the chest of the common man, an ember glows — small but stubborn.
It refuses to die, even as winds of injustice blow hard.
It dreams of a morning when Nigeria’s table will be for all, when secret recruitments will have open gates, and the fisherman’s child may sit where the children of elite have sat.
But until that day, Nigeria remains a land where some eat in palaces, and others watch from the street, with bowls empty and hearts heavy.

EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO – writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State