In October 2016, Lagos Ministry of Transportation announced that it would employ 1000 graduates to work as bus conductors.
In a country, where unemployment is as high as the sky, any job offer from the government is accepted with alacrity.
This is what was expected in Lagos, when the government planned to better the lives of unemployed university graduates by providing jobs for them.
But this time, the government offered them the wrong job which came with disappointment that made the graduates to ignore the offer and the remuneration it promised.
In October 2016, Lagos Ministry of Transportation announced that it would employ 1000 university graduates to work as bus conductors.
Did you say as Bus Conductors?
Yes, they would be employed as Bus Conductors and would be on the payroll of the government with a salary worth of N50,000 per month.
According to the National President of the Bus Conductors Association of Nigeria, BCAN, Comrade Israel Ade Adeshola, the objective of employing graduates for the job is to make bus conducting attractive, respected and dignified as obtainable globally.
However, Nigerian graduates did not seem to believe there is any dignity in working a bus conductor.
Many of them believe it is ridiculous to study in a higher institution for four or five years only to get a certificate to become a conductor on the ever busy roads of Lagos city.
Their experiences and encounters with Danfo conductors is not a good one and they can't bring themselves to fighting with the louts among the National Union of Road Transport Workers over money or with passengers over balance.
There is a clear contrast between graduates and bus conductors in Lagos and the government's attempts to bring the graduates into the job was negatively perceived.
No graduates wants to see himself wearing white singlet on a shot with a pair of bathroom slippers conducting a bus from Iyana-Ipaja to Oshodi. No graduate wants to have anything to do with violent louts called agbero and get scars on his face because it is a government's work.
Nigerian's perception of Bus Conductors is a battered one and everyone expects the government to have reformed bus conducting job before making attempt to bring in graduates to join the business.
Some unemployed graduates would prefer to engage themselves in another job that pay N30,000 or N40,000 than be a bus conductor and earn more.
These are the reasons many turned down the offer because Lagos bus conductors and graduates are not friends. While many graduates majority of conductors as louts and vagabond, some conductors despise everyone who speak English claiming to be a graduate but do not see to have a job.
Pulse sought Lagosians opinions about government effort to employ graduates as bus conductor and no one believe it is an ideal thing to do to someone who went to a higher institution for years.