Yoruba
films aficionados would no doubt be familiar with the spectre of the gateman, a
comic relief that almost always overwhelms the story arc. Most times, the
gateman is caricatured as a half-wit; his “acting” lacks any artistic subtlety;
he talks too much and most of the lines are improvised, and can be irrational
and rude. Like Esu in Yoruba cosmology who is the gatekeeper between the
celestial and terrestrial realms and therefore privileged to know many secrets
of both humans and the gods, the gateman in Yoruba films also knows too much
for his lowly status. Much credit can be given to Babatunde Omodina, the Baba
Suwe character who turned the role of a gateman into such an outsized and
hyper-visible one. His natural boisterousness meant no director could contain
him and so he was left to roam free. Without the discipline of a script, he was
uncontainable, disruptive, rude, and brash.
The
gateman is also a reminder that Nigeria’s technological evolution is static.
Our society is one that necessarily rigs the urbanscape with fences and manned
gates because we have not quite developed sophisticated and automated means of
securing our houses. We resort to fences and gates even though they are ugly
and take up useful space; some really beautiful architectural masterpiece
cannot be flaunted because the owner has to wall him/herself inside. Yet,
without fences we would be doomed by ravaging forces from outside that threaten
our private domains. Since the network of infrastructure that can help us
manage our urban landscape more efficiently is currently missing, we have the
gateman.
The
gateman thus signifies a technocultural lack, a permanent reminder that we are
a pre-automation society. Another reminder of such lack is the bus conductor.
Bus conductors exist because our society has not yet engaged technology. We
still use bus conductor to chant destinations at the top of their voices. We
are not yet a cashless society where, instead of submitting our money to a
conductor, we can simply swipe bus tickets or cards. If we have properly
designated bus stops, and each bus has buttons one can press to indicate to the
driver that one wants to alight, we will have no need for conductors. Just like
we should, ideally, have minimal or no need at all for gatemen.
However,
Nigeria not only has bus conductors, they also have an association run by a
“national president.” Typical of labour union in Nigeria to display socialist
pretensions, the president goes by the title of a “comrade”!
Lately,
the President of Bus Conductors Association of Nigeria, Comrade Israel Ade
Adeshola, announced that they were working with the Lagos State Ministry of
Transportation to employ 1,000 graduates from various universities as bus
conductors. He said they were already training the graduates and they would be
paid N50,000 monthly as salary. Their objective is to make “bus conducting
attractive, respected, and dignified as obtainable globally.” I do not know how
much of the globe “comrade” Adeshola has travelled, but if he is talking about
western societies, he should know that the job of a bus conductor has long been
phased out. The same thing with jobs like car wash and fuel attendants. While
those societies are still experimenting with driverless cars – and one day
their buses will drive themselves – Adeshola should also know that those who
drive their buses are mainly those with equivalent of senior secondary school
certificate and some professional certification.
For
the life of me, I had to wonder why of all people they had to reach for to
empower bus conducting, it had to be university graduates. What becomes of the
uneducated and the school dropouts that currently do the job of bus conductors
when graduates begin to gentrify such occupations? Why not train those that
hold the jobs if they are concerned about the dignity of the profession? Either
the proponents of the idea have an aversion for what the university personifies
or they are espousing the Nigerian reality – that the quality of a graduate
degree in Nigeria has been so devalued it is no better than illiteracy, and
should therefore be denigrated accordingly.
Let
me make it clear at this point that I am in no way looking down on bus
conductors. Through their jobs, they hold up their own share of the Nigerian
sky. Like many of us, they are simply trying to live their lives with as much
human dignity as they deserve. A decent society is one where everyone,
including low wage earners, is not only allowed their dignity but also access
social structures that can guarantee their upward mobility. If anybody with a
university degree, of their own accord choose to be a bus conductor, it should
be no problem. My worry is governmental involvement; it means they are not
thinking with an eye for the future, just merely widening the culture of poverty
and underdevelopment.
We
should be making plans towards using technology to create more opportunities
for the society and planning for that time when certain professions would be
inevitably phased out. This BSc “Bus Conductor” plan will instead contract
opportunities. Meanwhile, as they are planning a future of “Bus Conducting” for
graduates, Nigeria is busy approving more universities and we are planning to
turn more polytechnics into universities. This kind of disparate thinking
reflects part of the problems of our society. We do not have an overall idea
and philosophy that undergird policies, and leaders in their various corners
basically end up working at cross-purposes.
What
exactly does a Lagos bus conductor do that anyone needs four years of education
in the university to execute? If you want people who earn low wages to aspire
to get an education, why not start with OND at least? Why start from the
university which is the pipeline through which societies train their elite and
thinkers? Why send people to universities and then provide them with jobs they
do not need an education for? Anyone that thinks that having graduates as bus
conductors will improve road business should first of all ask why Nigeria that
produces thousands of graduates every year has been unable to think her way
through modernisation. A number of the National Union of Road Traffic Workers’
officials in Nigeria flaunt degrees but you only need to see their primal
conduct when they want to seize motor parks from each other. If we have to
“use” graduates to try to shore up what is deficient in every stratum of the
society, then we would have to take everyone through the university so they
could get jobs as even gatemen!
We
should be looking at widening opportunities and one track is vocational
education. A country like Germany has a model of vocational education that
enables students to attend schools for an average of two days a week and spend
the rest of the time being affiliated to a company where they learn skills of
professions. Although Germany has standard universities, more than half of
students who leave high school choose this dual vocational training option
rather than more conceptual kind of education the university offers. Nigeria
can refine this system to suit her own local needs. There are university
students who are unfulfilled because they would have been better suited
elsewhere. Ours is a society that places too much emphasis on university
certificates but not everyone is wired to pass through that system neither should
a university degree be the only route or access to self-sustenance in any
society.
With
vocational education, Nigeria too can build students who will not only know
crafts that can translate into direct impact on the society through
self-employment, but also build theoretical education to boost their knowledge
of how things actually work and how they can be improved. Many technicians in
Nigeria simply acquired the craft, they cannot reverse engineer so as to
improve on the manufacturing process. Those are the aspects Lagos State should
be looking at, not enticing poor and desperate graduates with a N50,000 salary
to take a job that is no longer necessary in a modern society.
PUNCH
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