Although most people would joke that
just living in Nigeria, was a dangerous job on its own ( they would be
right ), in fact the only reason it’s not on this list is because we
aren't paid, between the crime rate, terrorism and decayed
infrastructure, the fact that your actually alive to reading this right
now means you're tougher than Rambo, but believe it or not there are
Nigerians who have it much worse than you do, people who have to dance
with death every time they go to work, so take a look at 9 of the most
dangerous jobs in Nigeria.
9. Electrician
OK so most
of you are surprised at this, but if you had really thought about it,
you would have realized that being an electrician in Nigeria is no
picnic, especially for those that work for power distribution companies,
carrying their heavy wooden ladders in the hot sun, going to
potentially hostile places to disconnect the electricity of potentially
hostile people ( and you can guess they won't be happy about that ), we
have had reports about electricians being beaten by locals and in one
case flogged by a state governor because the electricity went out when
his birthday was going on ( really it happened ), its like there not
just electricians anymore but the power holding company itself, people
blame them for everything. The danger doesn't end there folks, because
even if by some miracle your not one day beaten by locals, there's still
the problem of electrocutions from faulty wiring even electricians that
don't work in private homes gets electrocuted, because either the owner
of the house was too cheap to hire a proper electrician when he was
building the house and instead did it himself or he hired a fake and
only now when everything's gone to ruin does he call far from the case
hire a proper electrician to risk his life and fix it.
8. Construction worker
You've seen construction workers in other countries before, fully
clothed people, with hard yellow helmets for protection ( like in the
picture above ), but if you’re in Nigeria you've got to know that's far
from the case here. They work on buildings sometimes more than five
stories high, with no protection whatsoever (because boxers don't count)
with most times the only support being long bamboo sticks, and with no
health insurance, it would only take a misplaced foot on the bamboo to
send them to their deaths, even if there on the ground the possibility
of something falling on them is high, so of course it's dangerous.
7. Petrol tanker driver
We've all seen or heard about tanker related accidents and its never
pretty, the damages are usually gruesome and fatalities high. Driving a
normal vehicle through most Nigerian roads ( which seem to have more
portholes than road ) is difficult enough, but driving a really large
vehicle, filled with inflammable liquid is just playing with danger, all
it takes is just one wrong turn, a big enough pothole or even a crazy
driver and your dead, tanker drivers face the risk of agonizing death if
burnt by fire or a quick one from impact alone .
6. Telecommunication mast
The danger in this one is pretty easy to see isn't it, all you have to
do is look at your nearest mast, you see how tall it is, well its built
by people and when it malfunctions, which it will every now and then
someone has to repair it, that's where these engineers come in to fix
these tall scary steel structures, most of them more than 40 feet high,
the good news is at least the ones I’ve seen are equipped for the job,
but still at those heights anything can happen.
5. Armed forces
This Covers the air force, navy and army, so basically people who are
allowed to wield weapons and shoot people, with such privileges I.e. the
guns, it begs the question how are these groups of people in danger, to
answer that I would advise you to look around. We've got terrorist in
the north bombing and killing people and had militants in the south
killing and kidnapping people, and even though they face more danger
than say the electrician, their paid almost the same if not less. I'm
not even sure they have health insurance, and if they eventually die the
family is hardly compensated, think about it the government hardly pays
its living workers, you think their families are going to get
compensated if they die, no wonder they are always so angry.
4. Police
I
was kind of conflicted on whether to put this before or after armed
forces, but then decided on after, because whatever soldiers were
facing, the police were facing it too, for example soldiers are killed
by boko haram terrorist, so are police officers, you know when they raid
police stations to bust their peeps out if prison, and whereas the
soldiers font have to deal with everyday problems like kidnappers, armed
robbers or just crazy Nigerians, the police has to deal with that and
still get killed by terrorists ( now does that seem fair ) all on top a
bad paycheck and no insurance or compensation.
3. Armed robbers
I know most of you are probably asking yourselves " is armed robbery
really a job ", well yes it is, sort of, but don’t just take my word for
it according to www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/job,
a job is work that a person does regularly in order to earn money ( so
as long as they rob regularly we're good ), thank you Merriam, now that I
have been vindicated and you're probably nodding in understanding,
let's continue.
OK we've already cleared up the fact that armed
robbery is indeed a job, so what makes it so dangerous? You ask, where
should I start, oh I know “you ", not just you but everyone in Nigeria.
Nigerians hate giving people things, especially money because we have so
little of it, we even hate paying taxes because we don't want to give
the government our money, and then here comes a group of armed
individuals coming to take your stuff or worst, cash, and of course you
can't do anything about it because they have guns, so in that moment you
swallow your resistance and pain, so as not to get shot. Then a few
weeks after getting robbed, you see were a group of people just caught a
robber, right then you remember your new laptop that was stolen and
suddenly it becomes personal. We've had incidences of robbers being
beaten, maimed and burnt in Nigeria and though its very wrong, you can
see where the hate stems from, but even if they weren't burnt to death
by an angry mob, the law isn't much better, since the Nigerian police
normally just shoots to kill, if you're a robber ( and they don't say
freeze ), and if they don't kill you, you end up on in a holding cell
till trial, which is almost worst than death, and when you do eventually
get trialed, you risk spending 14 years in jail, life in prison or
death if you killed someone, so next time you get robbed at gun point,
just smile cause you know what's coming to them. Robbers ate hated and
killed by both the police and people, yet its only number 3 so what job
is worst ?
2. Oil vandal
This applies under the same
job definition as armed robbery, Nigeria's special in this case as its
one of the only country, whose citizens steel oil, it goes to show you
how bad things are that people would steal their own resource. Though
for some, the venture is extremely profitable, it is far from safe,
besides the risk of getting burnt to death in the very likely chance
that something goes wrong and an explosion happens, in which case they
would probably suffer an agonizing death, there's also the fact the
federal government has been on a war path with these vandals for several
years now, security forces as well as local vigilante groups have been
tasked with catching them ( and they don't play nice ), oil vandals
risked the chance of getting burnt, shot or prison time ( yep pretty
dangerous ), yet its not number 1 so what job is more dangerous than
everything one the list
1. Manual river sand extractor
I actually learnt of this on an episode of don't tell my mother on
discovery channel, when they came to Lagos and one of the places the guy
visited was a river sand extracting site, for those of you who don't
know what a manual river sand extractor does, let me enlighten you, they
carry empty buckets to the floor bed of a river, fill it up with sand
and carry it back up to the surface, pretty easy right, NOT, no part of
that is easy or safe, first of all these rivers are very deep any
inexperienced diver would drown in minutes, plus its a Nigerian river
for crying out loud talk about murky, you wouldn't be able to see two
feet in front of you, and did I forget to mention that the guy had no
equipment whatsoever not even goggles, the only thing he was with, was
the pocket and boxer shorts ( what's with manual workers and boxers in
Nigeria ), this guys risk getting wounded or killed by sunken scrap
metal or by dangerous aquatic life.
As you can imagine in
jobs like this with ever present danger anything can go wrong and only
the need for money and the decision to not be unemployed is the only
reason these guys having quit, so do you still think you have a bad job
bad.
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