9 Most Dangerous Jobs In Nigeria

Although 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.