The “I say no time eh!” phrase by top Nigerian ragga artist Timaya best describes my condition in the in last four months, in which time I haven’t blogged (though “no inspiration eh” comes a distant second). Right now at 9.21 am it’s one of those precious weekends for me and as I type this on my generator-powered battery-weakened laptop in Makurdi I await the start of Nigeria’s game against Japan in the on going Olympic men’s football event. So what have I been up to all this while and what’s happened to the time? Here’s what.
I’ve since completed my bank’s ten week entry level training programme in Abuja and have been deployed to Makurdi branch in our North Central Region. Yes, my love affair with Benue State continues having served here (NYSC 2006/2007) and been back shortly afterwards for a short business venture.
Training school was fun no doubt but I also learnt a tremendous lot and had my mind opened to many new perspectives of life. Part of the gains of the training was being able to make my first ever visit to a prison…Kuje Prison Abuja to be precise. Banking being a profession based on trust, integrity is a necessary value and so the visit to the prison apart from its social responsibility import was to show us how low we could sink if we lost our integrity. The funny thing though is that Kuje Prison wasn’t at all like what I expected; it looked more like any well maintained Government boarding house secondary school in Abuja except that the inmates couldn’t leave the area…ever! There were the sober religious type, the ashamed from-a-comfortable-background type but most looked like the average Joe on the street type. Some buildings were recently painted, the compound was neat, there were a lot of new structures and the effect of charitable donations/support from the public/NGOs could be seen. Me thinks that being a population database poor, non safety and security conscious country an escape from the prison would be easy and have the least of consequences. Anyways I digress.
Back to the subject it feels good to be in banking. The opportunities it offers you are endless but the effize of the profession is too much; one could easily get carried away! One could also get “carried away” by the pressures of the job. The demands are heavy so to be on top of ish you’ve got to be sharp and proactively continuously learning. Worse still like I said at the beginning one’s time-crunched! We’ll survive though.
And survival starts with watching my first Dream Team 4 game at the Olympics in a short while. I almost can’t believe I missed their first match…an Eagle’s match!” Work sucks at time! I can believe though that the Abuja Stadium disappointed yet again spectator-wise at the Man U-Portsmouth game a fortnight ago. To the best of my knowledge the only time its stands ever filled up for a football match was The All African Games 2003 u-23 men’s final between Nigeria and Cameroun. As expected a large portion of the crowd got in for free and a much larger portion of the crowd of football lovers in the city just couldn’t be bothered. We shouldn’t loose hair or bother too much to when ever Nigeria goes out of a football tournament. Football is an art not a science and even with the best of preparations one could still falter. Someone’s bound to loose…It ain’t gonna be me though. Ah game time! Excuse me while I do the needful. One!
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