Most Dangerous Jobs In Nigeria

kAlthough most people would joke that just living in Nigeria,
was a dangerous job on its own ( they would be right ), in
fact the only reason it’s not on this list is because we aren't
paid, between the crime rate, terrorism
and decayed infrastructure, the fact that your actually alive
to reading this right now means you're tougher than
Rambo, but believe it or not there are Nigerians who have
it much worse than you do, people who have to dance with
death every time they go to work, so take a look at 9 of the
most dangerous jobs in Nigeria.
9. Electrician
OK so most of you are surprised at this, but if you had
really thought about it, you would have realized that being
an electrician in Nigeria is no picnic, especially for those
that work for power distribution companies, carrying their
heavy wooden ladders in the hot sun, going to potentially
hostile places to disconnect the electricity of potentially
hostile people ( and you can guess they won't be happy
about that ), we have had reports about electricians being
beaten by locals and in one case flogged by a state
governor because the electricity went out when his
birthday was going on ( really it happened ), its like there
not just electricians anymore but the power holding
company itself, people blame them for everything. The
danger doesn't end there folks, because even if by some
miracle your not one day beaten by locals, there's still the
problem of electrocutions from faulty wiring even
electricians that don't work in private homes gets
electrocuted, because either the owner of the house was
too cheap to hire a proper electrician when he was
building the house and instead did it himself or he hired a
fake and only now when everything's gone to ruin does he
call far from the case hire a proper electrician to risk his
life and fix it.
8. Construction worker
You've seen construction workers in other countries
before, fully clothed people, with hard yellow helmets for
protection ( like in the picture above ), but if you’re in
Nigeria you've got to know that's far from the case here.
They work on buildings sometimes more than five stories
high, with no protection whatsoever (because boxers don't
count) with most times the only support being long
bamboo sticks, and with no health insurance, it would only
take a misplaced foot on the bamboo to send them to their
deaths, even if there on the ground the possibility of
something falling on them is high, so of course it's
dangerous.
7. Petrol tanker driver
We've all seen or heard about tanker related accidents and
its never pretty, the damages are usually gruesome and
fatalities high. Driving a normal vehicle through most
Nigerian roads ( which seem to have more portholes than
road ) is difficult enough, but driving a really large vehicle,
filled with inflammable liquid is just playing with danger,
all it takes is just one wrong turn, a big enough pothole or
even a crazy driver and your dead, tanker drivers face the
risk of agonizing death if burnt by fire or a quick one from
impact alone .
6. Telecommunication mast
The danger in this one is pretty easy to see isn't it, all you
have to do is look at your nearest mast, you see how tall it
is, well its built by people and when it malfunctions, which
it will every now and then someone has to repair it, that's
where these engineers come in to fix these tall scary steel
structures, most of them more than 40 feet high, the good
news is at least the ones I’ve seen are equipped for the
job, but still at those heights anything can happen.
5. Armed forces
This Covers the air force, navy and army, so basically
people who are allowed to wield weapons and shoot
people, with such privileges I.e. the guns, it begs the
question how are these groups of people in danger, to
answer that I would advise you to look around. We've got
terrorist in the north bombing and killing people and had
militants in the south killing and kidnapping people, and
even though they face more danger than say the
electrician, their paid almost the same if not less. I'm not
even sure they have health insurance, and if they
eventually die the family is hardly compensated, think
about it the government hardly pays its living workers, you
think their families are going to get compensated if they
die, no wonder they are always so angry.
4. Police
I was kind of conflicted on whether to put this before or
after armed forces, but then decided on after, because
whatever soldiers were facing, the police were facing it too,
for example soldiers are killed by boko haram terrorist, so
are police officers, you know when they raid police stations
to bust their peeps out if prison, and whereas the soldiers
font have to deal with everyday problems like kidnappers,
armed robbers or just crazy Nigerians, the police has to
deal with that and still get killed by terrorists ( now does
that seem fair ) all on top a bad paycheck and no
insurance or compensation.
3. Armed robbers
I know most of you are probably asking yourselves " is
armed robbery really a job ", well yes it is, sort of, but
don’t just take my word for it according to www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/job, a job is work that a person
does regularly in order to earn money ( so as long as they
rob regularly we're good ), thank you Merriam, now that I
have been vindicated and you're probably nodding in
understanding, let's continue.
OK we've already cleared up the fact that armed robbery is
indeed a job, so what makes it so dangerous? You ask,
where should I start, oh I know “you ", not just you but
everyone in Nigeria. Nigerians hate giving people things,
especially money because we have so little of it, we even
hate paying taxes because we don't want to give the
government our money, and then here comes a group of
armed individuals coming to take your stuff or worst, cash,
and of course you can't do anything about it because they
have guns, so in that moment you swallow your resistance
and pain, so as not to get shot. Then a few weeks after
getting robbed, you see were a group of people just caught
a robber, right then you remember your new laptop that
was stolen and suddenly it becomes personal. We've had
incidences of robbers being beaten, maimed and burnt in
Nigeria and though its very wrong, you can see where the
hate stems from, but even if they weren't burnt to death by
an angry mob, the law isn't much better, since the Nigerian
police normally just shoots to kill, if you're a robber ( and
they don't say freeze ), and if they don't kill you, you end
up on in a holding cell till trial, which is almost worst than
death, and when you do eventually get trialed, you risk
spending 14 years in jail, life in prison or death if you
killed someone, so next time you get robbed at gun point,
just smile cause you know what's coming to them. Robbers
ate hated and killed by both the police and people, yet its
only number 3 so what job is worst ?
2. Oil vandal
This applies under the same job definition as armed
robbery, Nigeria's special in this case as its one of the only
country, whose citizens steel oil, it goes to show you how
bad things are that people would steal their own resource.
Though for some, the venture is extremely profitable, it is
far from safe, besides the risk of getting burnt to death in
the very likely chance that something goes wrong and an
explosion happens, in which case they would probably
suffer an agonizing death, there's also the fact the federal
government has been on a war path with these vandals for
several years now, security forces as well as local vigilante
groups have been tasked with catching them ( and they
don't play nice ), oil vandals risked the chance of getting
burnt, shot or prison time ( yep pretty dangerous ), yet its
not number 1 so what job is more dangerous than
everything one the list
1. Manual river sand extractor
I actually learnt of this on an episode of don't tell my
mother on discovery channel, when they came to Lagos
and one of the places the guy visited was a river sand
extracting site, for those of you who don't know what a
manual river sand extractor does, let me enlighten you,
they carry empty buckets to the floor bed of a river, fill it
up with sand and carry it back up to the surface, pretty
easy right, NOT, no part of that is easy or safe, first of all
these rivers are very deep any inexperienced diver would
drown in minutes, plus its a Nigerian river for crying out
loud talk about murky, you wouldn't be able to see two
feet in front of you, and did I forget to mention that the
guy had no equipment whatsoever not even goggles, the
only thing he was with, was the pocket and boxer shorts
( what's with manual workers and boxers in Nigeria ), this
guys risk getting wounded or killed by sunken scrap metal
or by dangerous aquatic life.
As you can imagine in jobs like this with ever present
danger anything can go wrong and only the need for
money and the decision to not be unemployed is the only
reason these guys having quit, so do you still think you
have a bad job bad.