Every Nigerian Mistake
The revelation that the federal government of Nigeria appointed dead people into boards of federal government entities has provided hard data on how Nigeria works. It turns out that many of us are wrong on what we have thought on how Nigeria works. Before this bombshell, the construct is that you need to mount pressure on the gatekeepers to get appointments. Interestingly, that is not the case.
Simply, people could be taking resources from you to get your name into a list when in reality Nigeria uses a special spinner, and any name that shows up, dead or alive, is the choice. So, next time someone tells you that he did not get an appointment because his godfather failed him, do not bother to console him. There is no godfather. This is a spinning game. Nigeria does not do interviews for federal appointments thereby making it easy for a man who died a year ago to be appointed for a job. All the clusters of aides are contractors in their governments, and have no time to check a list that government puts out.
Good people, some of the positions dead people took might have been severely competed for, with the fake godfathers collecting cows and palm wine to place unsuspecting Nigerians. If the gatekeepers are even close to the deals, they would have noticed that the winning spin was going to the dead. But they were far away, deceiving people with dead promises.
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Appointing dead people to positions may not be new in Nigeria; the only "new" here is that the government did it in the Internet age. In the old media, the press could have seen the list before Nigerians, and helped government to cleanup. Unfortunately, they went live, cutting out the press, and got caught.
