Exploitation or Experience? The Truth About Internships in Nigeria

Starting as an internship is a great approach to a career path, because it brings a new graduate or a high school student to experience the real world. Still, there is a problem with this in Nigeria or perhaps Lagos state, most of the interns I have experienced or witnessed people interning often complain of extortions from companies and how they treat them, I would n believe it if I had not experienced this before, I will also share my story below.

I understand Nigeria is a developing country, and there are so many companies that struggle to survive, but this doesn't mean they should be taking advantage of interns. Interns are paid less, but they're still exploited in a harsh way, given jobs twice their size, and quarreled with if they don't do it. I have once been an intern and I work more than any other staff member in the company, so they all know me so well. I remember I interned at a company as a graphic designer, and these people made me their comms person across all platforms, they also made me manage their emails and creatings news letter not only that they gave me their website to manage for them, and also managed two company social media accounts, struggling to meetup with target, so far it has been really crazy on top how much. i couldn't even have tike for myself managing two comapnies social media account and doing all that all at once the funny part is that this is not a small company a very huge company that there are a lot of engagement going on so there is a lot to post about, not just that again i will still be the grapjhcis designe r and lot of review will be there, threr most ananoying part is that they now even gave me an operatiosn job to manage call and reach out to people. It got to a stage where I had to leave even though I hadn't received any better offer, I just had to go because these people were really taking advantage of me in so many ways. The design jobs I do take time, and another annoying thing again is that there is always pressure in the company because there are only a few workers.

Most organizations take advantage of interns because they feel they are fresh and inexperienced. My friend was paid 20,000 at one organization like that back then and they wanted him to come every day which is really crazy. Monday to Friday, he helps them manage their website which seems like a job that can be fully done remotely. Not just this experience again if friends come together to discuss their experiences back then it was really extreme and trust me, it 's really crazy.

I feel there should be a reporting body based on this not just interns also staff extortion, most organizations take advantage of workers and workers cannot really complain because there is not work outside there.

This is my entry to Hive Learners weekly prompt, week 214 Episode 2.

Thank You for Reading my post,

All image gotten from Gemini Ai