I was First to Carry a Placard but VP Osinbajo Met My Imitator - Jobless Ph.D. Student Cries Out

We reported it few weeks ago that a 26-year-old Portharcourt lady who is a PhD student made major headlines online and social media after taking to the streets with a placard to beg prospective employers for a teaching, lecturing or counselling job.


In an interview with TheCable, Ibubeleye McDonald, a mother of two is unhappy that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo overlooked her but met a Lagos lady who copied her action. Recall that we reported it here that Douglas Ezeugo Lilian built on McDonald’s ingenious one-man job protest by holding up a placard of her own in the Lekki area of Lagos state and ended up securing an appointment with the vice-president.

An unhappy McDonald told TheCable: “My question still remains, why is the federal government paying attention to the second person that went on the streets? “A couple of days after I went on the street, another lady in Lekki Phase 1 took to the streets and her pictures were put on the Internet.

“If you read all the news online, anywhere her name was mentioned, I was always referenced as the person who started it. So why would she be called and I would not? People keep telling me it is because she is Yoruba and I am from Rivers.”

Douglas replicating McDonald’s protest in Lekki 

Macdonald has not had a decent job since completing NYSC in 2012. She said she took menial jobs, but since 2014, she has not had any job at all, menial or otherwise.

“I just got fed up one day and decided to go on the streets. People did not believe I could do it. My friend was even laughing at me and I told her that her own case was not yet as serious as mine,” she said.

“I stood on the express way and passers-by kept taking pictures of me; I asked them to not only take those pictures but to also post them online. “I put my CV online on recruitment sites and I apply to job adverts I come across. But before you know it, they would have been given to someone else. You don’t get an invitation for an interview or anything,” she said.

Douglas meets with the VP 

McDonald said all she wants to do is to lecture or teach in a university or a college.

“I do not need a job in an oil company or in a big firm. All I want is to lecture,” she said, adding that she had applied to schools in her neighbourhood but none had given her positive feedback. “People keep telling me that I need to know someone to have an advantage and get a job, but I don’t want to believe this is always the case.

It is just tiring, and it is not that I am not qualified; they just haven’t given me the chance to show what I can do. I would prefer if I have been tested and proven otherwise, at least that way I know I have been examined thoroughly, but let me get the chance first.”

McDonald is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. programme at the University of Port-Harcourt, and would not mind any teaching job as long as she is allowed to continue her studies.

“That is why I was calling on President Buhari. If they can give me a job at the University of Port-harcourt, at least that way my studies would not be affected.”