Never before have I seen so much excitement on the faces of the Lagosian workforce other than a time when an oil company decides to announce that it is recruiting – well, that time is upon us. As at last week, the Nigerian  National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) published vacancies that cut across just about every academic discipline known to man. The buzz has been nothing short of electric! I wish PHCN had the same spark!

In the papers, in the office, in church, on the radio and even on my Blackberry as broadcasted messages, the NNPC vacancies have been the talk of the town. Applications are being accepted online until 31st December 2010. The link for the online application is here. Assessments will be carried out from January and successful candidates will probably be offered postions anytime from June. I predict a significant shift in the ‘couch potato’ demographics during this period and and a surge in Internet/Broadband purchases as they’ll be getting off their lazy asses to apply for the NNPC jobs.

But let me call this what it really is – a job lottery. At the end of the day only a small percentage will be selected out of the hundreds of thousands whom are applying nationwide. Some may still be able to use ‘political’ means to get these lucrative jobs, some diabolical or ‘juju’ means, others might just have a stroke of goodluck or better still, divine intervention. 

A job in any oil company in Nigeria is (and has always been seen) as the ultimate job to attain in order to be catapaulted into bougeorsie status. The term ‘he/she has arrived’ or ‘he/she don hammer’ (for my Nigerian counterparts) comes to mind when people make reference to lucky oil company recruits with fat salaries. Everybody here wants to live the Nigerian dream…and that dream varies significantly from one Nigerian to another.