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| Ohaegbu Mary: Manager Zoological Garden Jos |
Scoreline’s passion and commitment to contribute significantly to the collective aspirations and efforts of Nigerians to grow the economy is a continuous one. Thus, Scoreline’s avowed decision to lead a movement of opening up the socio-economic space and throw up at least 25000 jobs into the economy through constant coverage and reportage of job creation opportunities, follow up activities and constant promotion of business enabling environment policies and activities, and identifying and presenting the true entrepreneurs to the public are unwaveringly and unflinchingly on target.
Pursuant to the realization of her self-imposed mandate, briefly espoused above, Scoreline decided to via into a less discussed and therefore, somehow neglected area, but that promises a lot of job to Nigerians if properly harnessed. The idea is to explore the available job creation opportunities in the area, and to identify how citizens can key in and make a career out of such.
That decision took Scoreline to one of the highly experienced female Zoo Managers in Nigeria, the Manager, Zoological Garden Jos, the quintessential, amiable and adorable Ohaegbu Mary, author of the book “Wild Birds in the Zoological Garden Jos”, a very skilful and hardworking staff of the National Commission for Museums and Monument (NCMM) Abuja, posted and serving in Jos, the bubbling capital City of Plateau State, North Central Nigeria, from where she shared her experience for the benefit of the Nigerian public.
According to Mary Ohaegbu, Manager, Zoological Garden Jos, a Zoological Garden is an institution in which Wild animals, birds and sometimes few domestic ones are kept and exhibited in captivity. She noted that a Zoo is a place, where animals are confined within an enclosure and displayed to the public, and are also breed.
Continuing, the soft spoken Manager, informed Scoreline that the term Zoo is an abridged form of the word Zoology which is derived from the Greek word Zoom. Explaining further, she noted that the word Zoology is a combination of two Greek words “Zoom” and “Logos. While Zoom means animals, logos stands for knowledge, she said.
To ensure clear and proper understanding of her message, the Zoological Manager, Mary Ohaegbu, went further to inform Scoreline that Wild animals are kept in the Zoo and cared for by Zoo keepers for education, research and breeding and recreation purposes. Another reason for keeping the wild animals in the Zoo she observed is to prevent wild life from going into extinction as a result of urbanization, road construction, agriculture and other activities of man on earth.
Speaking in the area of job creation opportunities, she drew the attention of willing members of the public desirous of pursuing a career in Zoological activities to acquaint themselves with the duties and responsibilities of Zoo keepers.
She therefore, called on such people to strive diligently in their quest to be a dependable resource to the captive animals, and to humans, especially, visitors to the Zoo, to work very hard on enhancing their ability to be able to avoid or mitigate hazards associated with being killed by wild animals like lions, tigers and others, and to avoid the escape of animals from their enclosure.
According to Ohaegbu Mary, Manager, Zoological Garden Jos, who though is enthusiastic and very passionate about the younger generation picking a career in her field of endeavour, did not hesitate to quickly inform such individuals that it takes effort, dedication and commitment to provide the required level of care to captive animals. To buttress her point she said this involves the 24 hours of each day, the 7 days in a week, and the 4 weeks in a month and the 12 months in a year. It happens in and off the season, when the rains are high and during the season of heat, she emphasized.
Encouraging such people, she noted, – what I just said should not discourage anybody. They are doable things. Speaking about the work environment as a way of encouraging the people, Ohaegbu Mary says to Scoreline:
“Those of us working presently in the different Zoological Gardens in Nigeria, especially, those in the position of managers, are, like our predecessors, working hard to improve the work environment of Zoo keepers, to ensure that those coming after us will find the workspace and environment more encouraging, supportive and inspiringly more conducive”.
“Consider whatever challenge or difficulty you may encounter on your way to achieving your core objective of becoming one of the renowned actors, critical stakeholder and dependable Zoological Garden functionaries from Nigeria reputably celebrated in the Globe as a mere huddle”. Concluding she emphasized “If you can relate and care for the animals, your relationship with humans is many steps ahead and a huge success”. Thereafter, she urged “Since the foregoing requires diverse skills, interested members of the public can aggregate their skills and interest in specific areas, such as:
Training of the Animals - Training the animals for proper grooming and treatment when sick, usually through hand signals, spoken commands and other methods of communications. Teaching them to perform and conduct themselves in specific ways, in other to be able to relate in areas considered necessary for the safety of the animals and the people.
Keeping Animals Healthy - Working with veterinarians to ensure that animals in their care are healthy, and performing other jobs associated with this assignment.
Educating visitors - The ability to interact with people that visit the Zoo, to educate the Zoo visitors on how they can take care of the animals and give them tips and other useful educational information like the natural habitat, feeding habits and extinction status, interacting with the Animals, Training Animals and education and research.
Animal Care - This involves feeding, providing clean water and monitoring the health of the animals in their captive state. Provision of specialized diets for different species and administering medications as needed, and also keeping the animal enclosures or houses clean, making them safe and free from germs are part of the Zoo keepers assignments.
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