Akara Ayo (written by Segun O. Adio and Deji Yesufu)

Dedicated to the memory of sixteen young Nigerians who lost their lives at the National Immigration Service recruitment exercise.

Arouse the average unemployed graduate from sleep and ask for his dream place of work. In a flash, he would tell you a bank, or the oil sector, or a federal institution or a telecommunication company. He would never tell you he prays to work in the unregulated and scorned informal sector. Who could blame him? All the years he sacrificed to get an education was to get a ‘befitting’ job. So when you find a graduate who obtained a bank job but voluntarily turns in his resignation to embrace a blue-collar job, you want to know what went wrong. When you find that the job he willingly embraced is frying and selling akara (bean-cakes), you want to know what really really went wrong!

Front and side views of mobile shed

Anything for me?

Even though I write this piece as a Nigerian, with fellow Nigerians as the primary target audience, its application is universal.

Let’s perform some mind-reading activity together. Look for an infant; that’s a baby anywhere from a day to six months old. Give it any object: a button, a lock of hair or even a feeding bottle and I will predict what thoughts are racing through its mind. As it grips the object and stares at it, it is asking the question: “What is in this thing for me?” A second later he will immerse it in his mouth and moisten it with saliva as he tries to figure out what he can get from it. Sigmund Freud calls this phase of infanthood the oral stage and I daresay that the average Nigerian is stuck in this phase and may never outgrow it. Let me explain.