Discredit bank work as much as u like, the fact is that the sector is the biggest employer of labour in Nigeria today. I've always wanted a career in Human Resources Mgt, so I read Psychology in school, hoping to develop that inmy master's.
After NYSC, it was only banks that provided ready vacancies.So what do I do?, Sit @ home and wait for my dream job? Naahh. I had to take a job with a bank. It has not been a wlk in the park, but it has toughened me for the world ahead.
Besides, the money is good.In 5/ 6 yrs, I will be out with enough capital to do what I really wanted to do - Human Resources Consultancy.

@FemiD
I Guess U are among the few that have made sense so far on this post.

If U are self employed, wont u need workers in your firm. Or is a one man army thing?

Where is the best place to gain experience before venturing out?

The Institutions of learning where knowledge is aquired have people on payroll too for Pete's Sake.

The comments of some people on this post sound more like a case of "" Sour Grapes'''' ''Bitter Sugar''.

its remarkable how easy it is to develop tunnel vision when all you think about is the economics, easier still when you smother hope and turn the bad feeling into this delusional sense of accomplishment. nobody is against being on a payroll, moreso when we know that those in the "institutions of learning" decided to  be there out of conscious choice, or do you think your Masters' and Phd's lecturers CANT land a bank employment? NO!! they chose the field they feel they could perform best, and in this case their choices were apparently not occasioned by any lucre-grabbing mentality, the sort that drives a lot of young people to banks to the detriment of what they could achieve were they to unleash their potentials in the disciplines in which they majored: here you see an English major in Accounts, there cowering in a cubicle you find a Physics major mindlessly grappling with audits while a little way off an electronics major is trying to figure out whether debits arent credits.
this eroding of  discipline only occurs in banks, meanwhile in other semi-third world countries (read India and china) young people are blazing trails in IT, medicine, and other services sectors. and before you start with the economics crap let me remind you that once upon a time india had horrendous illiteracy and unemplyment levels in a burgeoning population in the face of massive brain drain among the educated ones. and all the government did was to deregulate, privatize, license etc to entice foreign investors and adventurers. now india is synonymous with outsourcing and a miraculously-spawned middle class, and a vibrant youth subculture that lives off its brains, purpose and determination.

well, its not all gloom as i see a fair number of naijans are thinking of opening own consultancy outfits.

I have often wondered what the"craze" was about in working with a bank, these days you find so many people wanting to get into only two sectors "The Oil Sector and the Banking Sector" as though other sectors do not exist. the bank Job is not the ultimate job in Nigeria but it obviously seems that most people have been forced to think its the next best thing in the country.
I read someone say "you were either employed or unemployed",
why? must we all sleep and face the same direction??
Why should people leave professions that they have dreamed about for years just to become a "TELLER"?and at the end spend the meagre salary they get on buying expensive immaculately designed suits.
I think people should stick with their passion and if it is working in a bank then they should stick to it,
Its a  little known fact that though banks employ the largest amount of graduates they also underpay most of them

Look my friend just grab any job that comes your way for now,if you want to maintain your profession or course of study,is like you are going to stay long in the labour market. In Nigeria of today the course you read deos not determine where you work.ok

Theodora, I utterly agreee with you; you've said it best than anyone can. banks are more obsessed with cultivating this hollow image of SUCCESS that they actually coerce their well-worn footsoldier employees at the bottom of the foodchain to SPEND SPEND SPEND on ludicrously expensive suits and ties and loafer shoes just to market the bank's apparent success story and fool everone else into thinking bank work is a slice of the good life. FALSE!!
they foister unrealizable targets upon you alongside workloads burdensome enough to make a mule keel over and all of a sudden a sort of subculture is created that makes bank work synonymous with WEALTH and HAPPINESS to such a glaring extent that now every nigerian graduate has a one-track mind of working in a bank.

and does anyone ever consider that perhaps banks employ more only because they have the highest labour turnover rate than any other industry?.

No, neoteny.

Banks arent employing more because they have a high turnover rate.

Banks are employing more because the Nigerian economy is improving.

Although you and the other detractors of the current administration may decide not to acknowledge it, a thriving financial sector is key to our economic growth.

Nigeria has vast amounts of oil wealth that hitherto have not benefited us. Now, the Nation is gaining the ability to manage its own funds. The first sign of this is the success of local banks. The reforms that are being put in place by the CBN and EFCC will soon ensure that these new, locally controlled funds, will be rolled downhill to the sectors in which they are needed.

In any case, the truth is this: the banking sector's 'star status' is a transitory phase, and as a result is temporary. However it is in *no* way a bad thing. It is a sign of good things to come. However if you treat it as part of the problem you may inadvertently shoot yourself in the foot.

The CBN will engineer a situation where the only way for banks to remain profitable will be for them to fund local businesses. This has begun already.

Don't give up hope on Nigeria yet.

uhhhmm!

@dakmanzero
well your proclivity for blah blah blah is legendary so i'm not that much surprised that your argument, if one can call it such, falls far too short of conveying whatever point it was you're trying to make. "banks are employing more because the economy is improving". okay, how precisely? and dont regurgitate the spiel of Ngozi, Nenadi, Soludo et al; have heard it all before and it's nothing short of arbitrary horse manure pulled out of the air to hoodwink the rest of us. tell me by what factor the GNP has risen, tell me if standard of living has improved, give me facts that unemployment has dropped drastically and i may think you have merit. but my guy just blurping out that the economy is improving solely on the bases of an overhaul of the financial services industry is pure balderdash. that overhaul mean precious little from the grassroots up, and i wonder where a financially reckless government gets off telling banks to pull their acts together.

"Although you and the other detractors of the current administration may decide not to acknowledge it, a thriving financial sector is key to our economic growth."- first of all my rant was not political; i directed my salvo at the subculture and aura of career fulfillness that banks exude and not the failings or otherwise of this administration. i dont think my opinions justify the "detractor" label. secondly i dont for one minute think that a "thriving financial sector" (whatever that is) is key to our economic growth: okay the global trend is towards development and expansion of the services industries, but then that's because much of the global world has passed the phases of development we're yet to attain. what i think is key to our growth is development of the manufacturing and heavy industries. reason: 1, we'll be less reliant on importation of consumer goods; 2, job opportunities will exist for all classes of manpower; 3, ancillary services will spring as offshoots to complement the industry, thereby creating other industries resulting  in a variegated economy. this is what will very well bolster the financial services industry.4, a middle class may well be created, with the purchasing power to consume the output of the industries.

i dont know what it is about this oil that makes people forget that in real world terms when you talk of oil you mean it in cash form, in funds. only geologists speak of oil in the ground so the funds you talk of as being "properly managed" stem from oil proceeds in one way or another.

ooer

neoteny attacks once again

i give up. the banks are evil and are destroying our economy. we must burn them all down NOW!

money under the matress, i say. just make sure to have a nice machete ready to emasculate any would-be matress robbers

greycells, u could not make quality contribution because u do not understand the topic. mumu! nairalanders thanks for the contribution.u guys are GREAT.

@dakmanzero
my fave dissenter is back again

how you been man?

machete under the matress is soooo stone age, what i got me is a well-oiled 50mm Gatlin Gun in the wardrobe!

NO, lets not burn the banks-let's rob them first THEN burn 'em down!

boy did you see the mad stampede November 17 in front of walmart? my gawd, ps3 is really taking off! someone even got shot.

Neoteny:

and does anyone ever consider that perhaps banks employ more only because they have the highest labour turnover rate than any other industry?.

Good point there,

@adeg, were you fired from a bank or do you know people (first, not second-hand) that were fired?

Highest labour turnover rate is an untrue and unfair statement.

@Neoteny, you DO know that posession of firearms by civilians is illegal in 9ja! Abeg no dey open ya yansh for hintanet oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

and by the way, how things? And did you beat the, *QUEUES*,

If you didnt, you still have a chance! The going rate on ebay is about 1100 dollars and im SURE you can afford that!

@darkmanzero
no, wasnt in the queue because i'm still in kaduna.

everything illegal is easier to come by, more satisfying, and has more value.  so i'm keeping my guns.

1100 dollars. hmm <rubs chin>, me thinks i now DEFINITELY have a motive to rob banks!

another thing that people don't seem to understand is that those banks will still fail. not might fail, WILL fail. sooner or later in spite of the "turnaround"" that you people make too much of. infact, what turnaround? some banks just came together, pooled their human resources and consolidated only balance sheets and some people *here* are hailing it as the road to recovery for us. utter rubbish. most of the banks are in this stage of "okay, that's 25billion in the bag. so-what next? how do we move on?" most of them have a problem of synergy (eg unity bank). so they can't move on.
our economy is not enough to sustain banks. soon they'lkl have no choice but to offer loans to ailing companies, then bad debts will rise leading to distress.
and the biggest problem facing nigeria today IS the very lifeline of the banks: oil money. the only solution to our probl;em is stop spending oil money. there's just too much of that money in circulation chasing fewer goods so inflation is here to stay (and keep rising), and that makes nonsense of any attempt to usher in the culture of internal production. how can you be compettitive in the face of 30% inflation, AGAINST cheaper foreign imports? you wont last 3 years!

if we really have to spend, at least let us externalize that expenditure. let us make payment in dollars and devalue the naira. with that regime, there'll be less cash circulating around, less inflation (and more opportunity for internal production) and more value will be added to goods and services such as what you have is what you earned. not this silly welfarist system our want to-be presidents are advoicating.
that is the trunaround we need, not mere consolidation of balance sheets.

I'm an Entrepreneur and gonna be Entrepreneur till I die. How much I make I gotta tell u it was difficult in the begining but its wonderful now.

From having Web.Multimedia.Consulting typed on my complementary cards. To finding new opportunities in Agriculture and Animal Farming. To expanding my IT horizons. And even putting little of it to my leisure music making. I make more than ur average bank big-boys make!!!! And I dont fear unexpected resignation.

Noone will tell me JOHN!!! Ur fired!!!. I've told couple of ppl that though.

Entrepreneur till DEATH do us PART!!!

Easy to advocate what is essentially SAP when u arent a poor man.

Won't it be difficult to sustain a non-welfarist system when the overwhelming majority of your citizens are illiterate and living below the poverty line?

I believe it is elitist and snobbish to assume that empowering the people with readily available microfinance will turn them into a mass of lazy bottom-feeders. The opposite. Human greed will cause them to reach for the skies and CREATE the 'value added' climate that you seem to like so much.

The decisions taken by the CBN are not 100% guaranteed to work, but they stand to benefit the nation greatly if they DO work. Our problem is not that we are a one-product economy, it is that our oil wealth lies unused. A system that creates a feedback loop turniong ouil money into actual wealth will kickstart growth in other sectors.

At least give the common man some hope, dont cut his throat.

I dont envy bank employees myself but atleast one has to start from somewhere.

Nice contributions so far. Every man is entitled to his own opinion, cos we all c in parts & from diff stand points.

But I support the opinion that the female folks (especially the married ones with children to cater for)should be less involved in the current Naija banking system cos of the demand in time, morality, etc. Unfortunately, we have few alternative jobs for them in Naija. But i would recommend a teaching job or any other in which they can get back home latest by 7:30pm to culture the values of a decent family among the children. There's really no need making so much money and having a deliquent home with no good values as our forefathers tot us.

But more particularly, despite the prevalent odds posed by the unfortunate Nigerian Economy, I still subscribe to enterprenuership. There is no better satisfaction to life than is obtainable in self-employment, despite the risks. In ur own business, u make ur best strides and fun --this's the truth. I am still an employee, but i rather see myself as a Enterpreneural apprentice. I would break out and forth someday in my own venture, after understudying the rules. Though taking my time, I can't wait for that time.

My opinion, wherever u find urself, be the best the can. Work as though it's yours. Keep abreast with knowledge, but direct it to a purpose. U can run ur own independent business even while still working for someone else; but make sure u dont cheat ur boss in time and others. We are best on our own, but in the light of the Naija situation, take ur time to learn and build. There's no hurry in life.

If u see bank job, hug it but dream bigger.

@dakmanzero

"Won't it be difficult to sustain a non-welfarist system when the overwhelming majority of your citizens are illiterate and living below the poverty line?"

and at what point will they get out of the poverty line? think government handout will do that? hang on, hasnt the government been trying to that for decades? is there ever a hsitory of when and where a welfarist system uplifted the masses to lofty heights? theres a reason communism will forever remain an ideal, as theres a reason socialism decayed after subjecting the common masses to endless penury. in the aftermath of so many upheavals, only capitalism remained standing. these however are extreme examples but the fact is, depending on welfare will actually stifle the zeal to be entrepreneurialistic.
government schools will never offer qualitative education to eradicate illiteracy; nor will social security or whatever welfare package lead to riches and a booming economy.
microfinancxe is not teaching people how to fish; it is giving them a little fish to carry them to the next day. how is that better?

will pick this up tomorrow.