In my whole working career the only incidence that brought tears to my eyes was the first time I came face to face with corruption early in the job - and I was made the fall guy.
I was a young NCE graduate eager to go back to school for a degree program. I had already started working as a teacher in a secondary school and all I wanted to do was to have a degree. The practice then was to work for a minimum of two years and you are automatically qualified for in-service.
After the mandatory two years, I secured admission from two universities without any sweat: University of Sokoto offered me admission to read BA English, while ABU Zaria gave me B.Ed. Language Arts. Admission then wasn't through JAMB and it wasn't highly competitive. My interest was to read BA English, but because at the time, you were looked down upon, especially in the northern part of the country, if you didn't study at ABU, I chose the later.
I duly applied for in-service at the then Kaduna State Ministry of Education, my employer. Katsina State was not created then. I waited in vain for the approval but it didn't come. I didn't bother because I knew it was automatic and I was qualified. It never crossed my mind that something was wrong, so with the cooperation of the principal of the school where I was teaching I went ahead and started school. After one year without the approval I started wondering what went wrong. I didn't even know that I was supposed to be paid some allowances until some of my colleagues drew my attention. I decided to go to the ministry and find out what happened to my application for in-service. The ministry at that time was in Katsina as the new state had been created. I was directed to the office of the officer in charge. When I went in, I found a very impressive fatherly gentleman, fully dressed in a blue (I still remember the colour) guinea brocade gown (Babbar Riga), old enough to be my father, sitting at the desk with all the personality of a present day senator. I greeted him with all the respect I thought he deserved and poured my heart out to him. He listened to me patiently and at the end he brought out my file from his drawer, went through it and asked whether I had started my studies. Innocently, I told him I had already spent one year in school.
He looked at me and said, "You left your place of work and went to school without approval?". I was taken aback...I reminded him that I had submitted my application more than a year ago. He said that wasn't an excuse. That I wasn't supposed to go without receiving approval. That I had committed a serious misconduct and my punishment was dismissal and a refund of one year salary. He became very angry and started ranting and said he was going to make sure I was punished for my ignorance. The sheer injustice of it all and the frustration suddenly brought tears to my eyes. I started crying uncontrollably and he just sat there looking at me, saying nothing. When I finished crying I got up and went out of the office and back to school. There and then it dawned on me that I had lost my job. I decided to start looking for another job.
I narrated everything to my colleagues at school who were also on in-service from my state. That was when they told me that I was supposed to negotiate with the man and give him part of the allowances for him to forward a recommendation for my approval...Wow! In my naivety - or was it innocence? - I never imagined that was what was going on.
The man actually forwarded a recommendation for a disciplinary action against me. But an honest superior officer analysed the whole issue in an essay in a long minute and pointed out that I had followed the procedure and applied within enough time, but nobody acted on my application for a whole year, coupled with the fact that I was qualified, I should be given "retrospective" approval and all my allowances duly paid. And that's what happened.
When the approval came within a short time and my allowances duly paid, I did a double take. Here was I expecting a sack letter but instead I got that of approval. Here was I expecting to refund a year's salary but instead, I was paid my full allowances without bribing anyone.
I tried to figure out what happened but I just couldn't understand - and nobody told me. It was long after I had graduated that I came across my file at the ministry where I found out all that transpired after reading the minutes.
Since that day, I fell in love with the word "retrospective"...and since then, I began to hate the teaching profession until I discovered that corruption was, indeed, everywhere, not just the teaching profession.
And since then I kept clear of that officer's Office. But every time we met I knew he knew that I had discovered his game plan. And he knew I knew he knew.