by Cheta Nwanze

During my recent waka, I got to a civil service establishment in a South-South state to administer my questionnaire. Now you see, a letter had been sent ahead of time to the Oga of the place that we were coming, and I was armed with the acknowledged copy, so I went with confidence.

Upon getting to the place, I wakad to the #OATT’s office, with all confidence. First issue: #OATT no dey office.
–When will he be in?
-We no know.
-Okay, no wahala, someone else can answer the questions.
-But oga we never see ya letter.

So I showed them.

-Oga, dis letter, we never see am. Oya, go dat room for dia, na dem dey receive letters.

So I go to the room, knock, and open the door. Pretty much as soon as I opened the door, some geezer slammed it in my face, no questions asked. Then he chooks his head out and screams at me, “We are eating. Come back later.”

Asides the rudeness, I don’t see an issue, so I put my headset on, and start listening to Football Weekly. Thirty minutes pass, and two other people open the door and walk in, so I walk in after them. There are now four people (not including me) in the room. Geezer who slammed door in my face, his Madam, and the two new entrants. They are all having a raucous discussion, and I have clearly interrupted. So I go straight to the point, and explain my mission to Madam. Straight up she tells me that they’d not received our letter. I show her the acknowledgement. While she makes a show of examining the stamp on the ack to see that it’s really theirs, the other three people exit the room.

Five minutes after she took the ack from my hand, she declares it genuine, and tells me to go to Room XX and ask for a chap called P. That the letter was sent to him. I give my thanks, and walk out to find Room XX. I find the room, knock on the door, there’s no answer, I try to open, it is locked. I knock again, still no answer, so I knock on the door of the room opposite, Room XXX, and I am answered at once.

I explain my mission to the chap who opened, and hearing the importance of what I came for, the chap says, “But P dey here just now na, I see am. Abeg wait, I dey come.”

Then he crosses to Room XX, and knocks on the door, hard. While he’s banging the door, he shouts, “P, I know say u dey dia. Open.” Finally, P opens.

The same geezer who slammed the door in my face earlier.

I, again, explain my mission, and he tells me to come tomorrow. At this point, I am pissed. Here I was, bringing an opportunity to this establishment, and I was being tossed to and fro. I decided to make this point and pull a little rank. I told him that:
a) I have been to other similar establishments in the South South, and got better reception;
b) I am not some small boy that he can toss around;
c) I am on a clock for a major client, and headed to the South East that very day;
d) if he wants his state to be a beneficiary of the proposed investment, he’d better attend to me.

Then I give him my card (in my head, I poked his eyes with it). He takes the card, and tells me that #OATT is not around, and that he will see what he can do. This was three weeks ago…

What is the lesson here for me?

P, I am sure, was paid his salary this week. This, despite his clearly bad attitude. What is interesting is this: following my experience, one of my partners sent an email directly to P’s #OATT, with our letters, and a scanned copy of the ack. We have not heard from them, up until now. This tells me that P draws his inspiration from his #OATT, and people will wonder why things are not moving.

Consider this scenario: someone close to me started a business in 2003. Business was sales of a food product. He employed ten young people, and put them on a salary. Then gave them the product to sell. In the first month, despite each person being given a hundred cartons of the product, the combined total of sales was four cartons. He chalked off that first month as ‘a new product being introduced to the market’. The second month was worse — three cartons, despite money being spent on advertising. For month three he changed strategy, and told the ten that their salaries were no longer guaranteed. Each person at the beginning of month three got a transportation stipend, and then would be paid based on how many they sold. Four days later, two of the workers came back to ask for more cartons. They’d sold all ten they were given. By month end, only one of the ten had not sold all his stock. He was fired, the rest retained, and given more to sell. The product is still in business, thirteen years later…

It is this simple — our government agencies are inefficient not only because they are bloated, but because too many of the people within that bloat know that their jobs are secure, and their meagre salaries will come no matter how late. That is a major disincentive to work. If we want to unleash Nigeria’s productivity, we need to have that conversation about proper civil service reform, geared towards incentivising people to actually get to work.

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