The Mirror We Refuse to See: Leadership Starts With Us
A Day in the Life of a PhD Researcher: The Relentless Pursuit of Knowledge
The Tragedy of Victory
The Ikorodu Mafia
From Accounts to Siberia: My Brush with Bureaucratic Corruption
Ever wonder how officials like Yahaya Bello allegedly divert public funds for personal use? This article lifts the veil on civil service corruption through a firsthand account. I share my experience as a young officer encountering a system where budgets are manipulated and projects become a source of personal gain.
It was at the turn of the decade that I got employed as a Grade Level 8 Step 2 Officer in the Lagos State Civil Service and posted to Agege Local Government as the Officer-in-Charge (OC) Accounts. I had just completed the mandatory one-year national youth service far away from home, returning to Lagos to start life after having spent the last two decades being prepared for it.
It was at Sita Street that I was introduced to Lagos, and this was where I called home. It was from here that I made the daily trip to the local government office on Abeokuta Street and back.
As the OC Accounts, my job was to ensure that the revenues and expenditures of the council were properly recorded, and that all expenditures were in line with the budgetary provisions as approved by the local government legislature as headed by a speaker. In short, to ensure compliance with the Lagos State Local Governments Accounting Manual, maintaining the Departmental Vote Expenditure Account (DVEA) and the Departmental Vote Revenue Account (DVRA).
To ensure this, all expenses were brought to my desk to confirm that there was a budgetary provision for the work and that the remaining provisions were adequate to accommodate the expenditure being made. It wasn’t a tedious responsibility for a young man aiming to become a Chartered Accountant, except that I wasn’t prepared for the politics that come with the position.
On this special day, as the hours on the clock ticked towards closing time, a voucher was brought to my table for approval. Reviewing the voucher, I realised it was for the installation of publicly funded pipe-borne water, not anywhere else but on Sita Street. I was alarmed! I had woken up and arrived at work from this street and had been unaware of any construction activities that would have led to a functioning pipe-borne public water tap being made available. Had I missed something? I held off on approving the voucher so that I could check out this good news.
Arriving on Sita Street at the close of work that day, I walked the entire length and breadth of the street looking for this public water tap and the accompanying infrastructure but found none. I asked my mum and siblings whether they were aware of any such installation, and the answer was No.
At work the next morning, I refused to approve the voucher and it was returned to the Council Engineer Office. Following this, the contractor who was to be paid for the work came to my office demanding an explanation, of which I told him that there was no such work done in the mentioned street. He drew my attention to the “certificate of work completion” issued by the Council Engineer, asking when it became my responsibility to validate whether work was done or not and left my office in anger.
Not very long later, one of the errand boys showed up at my office, informing me that the Chairman wanted to see me. At this point, I was frightened. I was just at the entry level of public service, so I had no direct communication line to the Chairman, and for the Chairman to request my presence was intimidating. For the very first time in my stay at the local government office, I was ushered into the expansive office of Mr Ajagunna, the chairman. Without looking much at me, he asked why I had refused to approve the voucher, a question to which I stammered to respond. Nothing I was saying made sense to the chairman, whose next instruction was, “Go and get me your boss.”
How I got downstairs, I still don’t know till date, but I surely did make my way to Mr Vaughan’s office. He was the treasurer, and having told his secretary about my mission, I was ushered into his office. He was a big man with a loud voice to match his stature. I explained to him that the chairman wanted to see him. Immediately, he heard that the call was from the Chairman; he didn’t bother to know why but started fuming, saying what have you, small boy, done now? Why would the Chairman want to see me? With myself in tow, we made our way back to the Chairman’s office, who flung the voucher at the Treasurer, saying, “Your boy has refused to approve this voucher, saying the work has not been done. Could you sign off on it?”
Muttering words of apology, he took the voucher and signed off on it in front of the chairman and promised the contractor, who was sitting relaxed at one end of the office, that the voucher would be expedited for payment. He took the voucher with him, and he continued bashing me with unprintable words as we made our way downstairs. He told me that my action was unauthorised as the work of validating whether a project had been done or not was that of the Council Engineer. All my protests that this was a public project claimed to have been executed in the street where I lived fell on deaf ears.
When you fight corruption, corruption fights back…
The version of me that left the council offices that day was the opposite of the ever-bubbling, confident self that had arrived earlier that morning. I knew the story would not end there; I had chosen to ride on the back of the tiger!
And truly, it didn’t. On resumption the following Monday morning, as I stepped into my office on the ground floor of the main secretariat building, I was handed a redeployment letter. Over the weekend, the civil service machine had been at its most efficient. I have been transferred and re-designated. I was no longer the OC Accounts but was now the OC Reconciliation. The humour was not lost on me; someone must have been ingenious in thinking that I would make better use of my investigative powers in reconciling the bank ledgers and statements.
I had been sent to Siberia. My Siberia was in sharp contrast with the Accounts Office that I had left behind. While the Accounts Office was on the ground floor of the main council building and was so big that it accommodated about six employees, Siberia was not. It was located at the back of the customary court area and away from any traffic or interactions with other people. In fact, until then, I had only heard of the office by name but was unaware of where it was located. It was a single room with no amenities apart from the ceiling fluorescent light, not even a fan. The office was messy, with files stacked wall-high and cheque stubs all over the place. At the account office, I had a team of about six reporting directly to me; in Siberia, that number was zero. My wings were clipped, and I could be of no further threat to anyone.
Nobody needed to say much to me; it was clear that I had no future career in Agege; my career in the civil service that had not started had ended already. I made up my mind that I needed to leave the local government for pastures elsewhere, and I did.
In a sad twist of events, related or unrelated, Mr Ajagunna was killed while he tried to be a Rambo on a rampage by Armed Robbers who invaded his house.
The Library on Wheels program….
But that wasn’t the only experience, though; it started with the Library on Wheels program. The council had conceived the brilliant idea of bringing the library to the people on wheels. I had been a beneficiary of the wonderful library system that Agege had, so I was sure that this initiative was one in the right direction.
Our Sita Street had a mix of kids when I was growing up – some more privileged than the others, and the Bankoles were surely privileged. We knew each other just faintly, as my uncle hardly allowed us to mix. With privilege also comes the opportunity to take life for granted and rebel. Not one of the Bankole’s pursued their education beyond the secondary school level, but then, with the privilege of being of the Bankole stock, one of them contested and got elected as the Supervisory Councillor for Education. With this election, he became one of the authorities that I needed to defer to.
On this given day, he had walked into my office with a voucher that had been approved for a training to be held in Ibadan. The problem was that there were no more funds on the vote for Education, and as such, I could not ascent to it. I explained this much, and he was furious. Condescending as well, calling me all sorts of names and questioning my competence. He asked me to use the budget of the proposed Library on Wheels, and I asked him to seek approval from his colleagues for the virement of the budget to cover this expenditure. He left very disgruntled and promised that there would be retribution for my subservience.
How the fund got paid to him, I don’t have a clue, but a few days after the training had taken place, I got a memo with the approval of the Treasurer to code the expenditure against the Library on Wheels budget head, depleting that budget line. At the time I left the council employment, the project had not taken off, and I doubt whether it did actually take off eventually or at the scale at which it was planned.
Mind where you thread…
Before all these events occurred, I had been forewarned by Mrs. Sanni, only that I did not take some of them seriously. Mrs Sanni was a kind soul sent to me divinely to guide me in my conduct as I got settled into working at the council. She was the OC in charge of Markets and was my direct report. We didn’t have a boss-subordinate relationship; how could we? What we had was more of a mother-son relationship. She was much older in years and had been working for the local government, probably from the time I was still in primary school.
She had whispered to me that I should be cautious of where I sit and where I thread in the council offices as there are those envious of my position who would do anything to hurt me and get me removed from the position. She narrated that as the OC markets, with responsibility for collecting revenues from all the stalls and women in the various markets in Agege, she was not conscious of this until she sat on a charm that someone had placed on her chair and developed a sickness that assails her, to the point of death, once yearly.
Until then, I never had an inkling of how powerful the position I held was and that it was the cynosure of the eyes of many of my colleagues. In those days, we had fash, pedi, and one young married lady as colleagues, all of whom had been sent freshly to Agege Local Government from the Ministry of Local Government Affairs. All these names have become big guys within the local government system and I disappointed not a few with the decision to exit the system such that a family member threatened never to have anything to do with me in the future, given that I was given an opportunity that he never got and I casually threw it away.
I started checking my seat before sitting down, removing the foot carpet before stepping on it and stopped sending the office attendant messages to buy lunch for me.
We get the leaders we deserve?
What I was to learn later was that society fuels the corruption that pervades the environment. Next to our house was a lady who had a drinks store, Iya Rashida known for her bleached skin and mingling with men of all sorts. Her beer parlour was the final calling place each night for people of different characters. She also wielded a large political influence as I guess she was the Ward’s Woman Leader for one of the political parties. Elections are not won on just promises; after all, anyone can promise heaven on earth. More importantly, they are not sustained either with emptiness; the boys have to be placated, and patronage in the form of opportunities for personal enrichment occur. A chairman that ignores this stands the risk of being removed by the legislators. She was a recipient of fridges, freezers and gas cookers from the local government, and I wondered how. What I came to learn was that by awarding fictitious contracts, contracts meant not to be executed, the party generates the money to run the organs of the party and buy the necessary patronage and votes of those in the local government that will make the next election possible. How else could people like Iya Rashida get the ‘dividends of democracy’ in the form of fridges and freezers? It was through grafts like invoicing for work not completed that the chairman and his cronies amass the cash with which they gratify the people to secure their votes.
This process has become institutionalised in our lives. We only need to look a little closer at the multitudes of abandoned projects and contracts not executed but announced on radios and televisions to understand the ramifications.
Some have said that we should shine the light on the Lagos-Calabar Expressway to be sure it doesn’t end as ‘food for the boys’ by ensuring its execution.
An experience with the Police
Moses’ Dilemma
Three Short Stories – Story 1
Leadership is difficult. It is made more difficult in a society if success is measured by riches and not many are concerned as to how such riches are acquired
Some moons ago, a gap-toothed man seized power in Arokostan, crowning himself king.
The people, of course, cried out against his tyranny. Among them, the voice of the khaki-clad school headmaster boomed the loudest. A fearless man, he led protests and lectured on what Arokostan should be, could be, but was not – unfazed by the king’s gun-wielding minions.
The headmaster was highly respected. After all, he had established a top-notch school, proving what good leadership could achieve in their community.
Despite being touted as the happiest nation; daily survival was a struggle for Arokostanians. Life was not a walk in the park. The gap-toothed king, a cunning leader, navigated Arokostan through economic, social, and political turmoil. He earned various nicknames. Some called him Arokostan’s Maradona, his political astuteness likened to the Argentine footballer’s dribbling skills, albeit with a touch of the “Hand of God.” While nobody saw him as a saviour, his undeniable intelligence earned him the moniker “evil genius” from some.
Maradona, tired of the headmaster’s constant wailing, spent sleepless nights plotting how to silence his nemesis while simultaneously winning over the people. The idea struck him like a sudden burst of light – a brilliant one. At dawn, he summoned his chiefs to a council meeting, sharing his plan. Of course, they were not as gifted as him in such matters so all they could say was that it would not end in praise. He was baffled – couldn’t they see his genius?
Maradona then sent out the town crier to announce the establishment of a “People’s Bank” offering soft loans to pursue various endeavours, with the esteemed village headmaster as chairman to ensure responsible management. The people rejoiced, expecting a new dawn. The headmaster, convinced it was a good thing for Arokostan, diligently took charge, determined to enact positive change.
Everyone seemed happy – Maradona with his gap-toothed grin, the headmaster and his ilk, and the people themselves. According to surrounding villages, Arokostanians were brash, self-centred, lawless, corrupt, and immoral. The king was not nicknamed Maradona for nothing; he was aware of this, something hidden from the headmaster who was consumed by his nationalistic fervour to improve Arokostan at all costs. Maradona anticipated the inevitable collapse and bided his time.
Arokostan had everything to be great – wonderful people and abundant natural resources, the envy of other villages. Despite this, Arokostanians were treated with disdain. Surrounding villages stopped trading with them and imposed excruciating permit processes for any visiting Arokostanian.
Well, a few moons later, the headmaster learned the harsh truth Maradona had known all along: Arokostanians were not ready for good leaders, perhaps didn’t even want them. Their actions spoke volumes different from their words. They only complained when things were not in their favour.
So, what happened? While the headmaster tirelessly strived to ensure a “better life” for the people, granting loans for what he saw as worthwhile opportunities, corruption festered under his leadership. When the scandal broke, he was in disbelief. How could this have happened? The very people he made policy decisions with were presenting fictitious projects to secure loan funding. Dejected, he approached Maradona, requesting prosecution for those involved.
Maradona, with a satisfied grin, placed a hand on the headmaster’s shoulder. “Sir, you’ve got the Moses problem. Remember him? While he was busy on Mount Sinai working with God, his people were busy making idols! While you focused on the bank’s vision, your people siphoned off the money.”
“So, sir,” the evil genius continued, “if you can’t manage a small thing like the People’s Bank, how can you handle Arokostan?” And uncle, he added, hammering home his point, “you’ve smeared my name because of my team’s corruption. It would only be fair if I blamed you too. But I will not, because I know who Arokostanians are. Why don’t you just go home and let me clean up this mess?”
Feeling humiliated, the headmaster went home, a broken man. How could this have happened to him? He was an honourable man and saw no justification to take part in any other protest against Maradona. The weight of it all likely contributed to his death a few years later.
His epitaph, self-written, reads: “Here lies Tai Solarin, who lived and died for humanity.”
by ‘Bimbo Bakare, the storyteller.
That candles be brought
To light our paths in these dark hours
Being my response to a planned protest by certain members of the Nigerian Association of Western Australia, planned for 30th September 2021 in Perth.
Having a dissenting opinion is not a ground for us to be uncivil. As such, I will like to crave the indulgence of all on this forum that may disagree with the thoughts that I will be expressing below, to be civil in expressing their disagreements. With that said, please find below my thoughts regarding this planned protest:
All foreign interests in Nigeria are exploitative, no nation comes to Nigeria (and none ever will) out of being magnanimous to help Nigeria become better. So, nobody is going to build Nigeria apart from Nigerians themselves – you and I.
Being convinced that we need to begin with the end in mind, I ask, what is the intent of this planned demonstration against bad leadership in Nigeria, on the streets of Perth? Is it to cause the Australian government to intercede in Nigeria? To levy sanctions against Nigeria or what?
I don’t know the answers that the organizers have but I struggle to understand how this planned demonstration will do Nigeria or her citizens any good. First, except there is an economic incentive, no government will intercede in the running of Nigeria. Second, if ever, sanctions are levied (which will not happen because of the exploitative relationship), I still don’t see how the common man on the streets of Ibadan or Auchi is well served. However, if the intent is to increase the level of despise the average Australians have for Nigerians, this is definitely a great way to achieve that. So let’s go ahead.
On a wall in an alley in downtown Perth I came across this inscription “Every country has the government it deserves.” I agree. Our government is a reflection of the larger majority of Nigerians. We won’t vote, we won’t volunteer for office, yet we want “the government of heaven on earth” but not one akin to that of Sat Guru Maharaji as one enters Ibadan! Where does this ever happen?
As Jesus asked those that were about to stone the woman caught in adultery, may I say that for anyone amongst us to have a moral standing to protest, such a person must have voted in the last elections. If your argument is that you have been away from Nigeria that long, please show that you have voted in previous elections while you resided in Nigeria. Now, the list of protesters has suddenly grown smaller.
This call for protest is against bad leadership in Nigeria. Peradventure, have we considered protesting against bad followership? Good governance doesn’t happen overnight, it requires two things, which we were taught in our Social Studies classes in secondary school – (a) Citizens must actively participate in electing their leaders and (b) they must hold their leadership to accountability. In these two responsibilities of a citizen, many of us have failed. We don’t hold leadership accountable by protesting in Perth, we hold each level of leadership accountable by asking them to account for their actions.
We all have elected representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Recently, these people voted to deny the electoral commission (INEC) the power to transmit results of elections electronically. As members of the diaspora, this should be concerning. Fortunately, we do know how each member of the house voted and thus have enough data to hold them accountable for their vote. Did we get back to our representatives asking them to explain why they voted the way they did? Are we noting these self-serving acts against the time they come again for re-election? These are the simplest things we can do to ensure we have the right leadership and yet, we leave them undone.
All the cries are about Buhari this, Buhari that. However, the majority of issues that affect us as a people are best addressed at our local level – the LG and states. The bad roads within Enugu affects the common man more than the bigotry in Abuja. The youth joblessness in Oshogbo is something within the powers of Gboyega Oyetola to fix. Each month, the FAAC meets in Abuja and money is doled out to the states. When Rivers State receives its allocation plus the 13% derivation, what does it do with it? Has the Ikwerre man looked into why the roads in Port Harcourt are in the sorry state and the once enviable garden city has become so dirty? Do we know and relate with our Councillor, our local government chairman, our governor ….. in that order? We surely don’t but we are quick to jump all these and put the blame in Abuja.
What have we learnt regarding the open grazing issue? We have learnt that most of our issues can be fixed at the local level. After crying against it and with Abuja offering deaf ears, what smart states have done is to institute laws prohibiting open grazing within the borders of their states. Whether Abuja likes it or not, no Fulani man can run his cattle on the streets of Benue now, he will be promptly arrested and his cattle confiscated for free suya meat. I see this as a very effective way through which this issue of grazing routes has been addressed.
Economic well-being gives voice to the voiceless. Good government results when the majority of the citizens have a voice. In essence, where poverty is endemic, good governance will remain a mirage. The reason why I don’t know of any nation with a high poverty rate that is ranked high on the Human Development Index (HDI). The politics of stomach infrastructure is easily curtailed when economic opportunities are provided to the electorate.
Many have abandoned Nigeria to itself and only pay lip service to investing in the country citing high level of crime, lack of infrastructure and all the social ills that currently bedevil it. To show the heightened level of hypocrisy, some are going around seeking international entities to come and invest in a country where they, as citizens, have considered it suicidal to invest! Yet, the flights from the middle-east to Nigeria are always full of Chinese and Lebanese going to Nigeria which make me to ask – What are they seeing in the country that we are not seeing? And, how come we abuse and criticize these folks for their harsh employment conditions when we are not providing an alternative? Please don’t get me wrong, I do not support enslavement employment conditions in any guise. Basically, what I am putting forward is that there is a way to address bad leadership through providing gainful employment opportunities for Nigerians so they have a voice and look away from selling their votes for “Naira-in-Bread”. How many jobs have we created for our folks back home and on what morality do we judge them not to sell their votes to the highest bidder?
In summary, my point is that, we need to look before we leap. Let us answer the question – how will this demonstration in Perth help to achieve the aim of good governance in Nigeria. We should also consider the myriads of things that are currently available for us to do that we have left undone.
Comments are welcome and I entertain all civil rejoinders to this. May Nigeria be blessed.
Nigeria on my mind
Old women tell tales
If Nigeria Fails?
With all the clamor for restructuring and separating the current entity called Nigeria into its separate ethnic nationality, I reached out into the archive to bring out this note of caution. It was the sincere message of Lyman to Nigerians to pull together to build rather than allow the nation to continue on its downward spiral into a failed state.
As with all prophesies, the prophet has sounded the alarm, i is now left for the people to heed the warnings or not. Years back, Christine Lagarde was in Nigeria. As the Managing Director of the IMF, she warned Nigerians of the impending recession if efforts were no taken to address the structural imbalances and fragility in the Nigerian economy. Her warnings went unheeded and the nation paid for it, big time. Let this warning of Lyman not suffer similar fate.
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If Nigeria Fails?
By Princeton Lyman
Providence, Rhode Island. USA.
December 11, 2009.
Thank you very much Prof. Keller and thanks to the organizers of this conference. It is such a privilege to be here in a conference in honor of Prof. Achebe, an inspiration and teacher to all of us.
I have a long connection to Nigeria. Not only was I Ambassador there, I have travelled to and from Nigeria for a number of years and have a deep and abiding vital emotional attachment to the Nigerian people, their magnificence, their courage, artistic brilliance, their irony, sense of humor in the face of challenges etc.
And I hope that we keep that in mind when I say some things that I think are counter to what we normally say about Nigeria. And I say that with all due respect to Eric [SILLA, SEE NOTE 3] who is doing a magnificent work at State Department and to our good friend from the legislature, because I have a feeling that we both Nigerians and Americans may be doing Nigeria and Nigerians no favor by stressing Nigeria’s strategic importance.
I know all the arguments: it is a major oil producer, it is the most populous country in Africa, it has made major contributions to Africa in peacekeeping, and of course negatively if Nigeria were to fall apart the ripple effects would be tremendous, etc.. But I wonder if all this emphasis on Nigeria’s importance creates a tendency of inflate Nigeria’s opinion of its own invulnerability.
Among much of the elite today, I have the feeling that there is a belief that Nigeria is too big to fail, too important to be ignored, and that Nigerians can go on ignoring some of the most fundamental challenges they have many of which we have talked about: disgraceful lack of infrastructure, the growing problems of unemployment, the failure to deal with the underlying problems in the Niger-Delta, the failure to consolidate democracy and somehow feel will remain important to everybody because of all those reasons that are strategically important.
And I am not sure that that is helpful.
Let me sort of deconstruct those elements of Nigeria’s importance, and ask whether they are as relevant as they have been.
We often hear that one in five Africans is a Nigerian. What does it mean? Do we ever say one in five Asians is a Chinese? Chinese power comes not just for the fact that it has a lot of people but it has harnessed the entrepreneurial talent and economic capacity and all the other talents of China to make her a major economic force and political force.
What does it mean that one in five Africans is Nigeria? It does not mean anything to a Namibian or a South African. It is a kind of conceit. What makes it important is what is happening to the people of Nigerian. Are their talents being tapped? Are they becoming an economic force? Is all that potential being used?
And the answer is “Not really.”
And oil, yes, Nigeria is a major oil producer, but Brazil is now launching a 10-year program that is going to make it one of the major oil producers in the world. And every other country in Africa is now beginning to produce oil.
And Angola is rivalling Nigeria in oil production, and the United States has just discovered a huge gas reserve which is going to replace some of our dependence on imported energy.
So if you look ahead ten years, is Nigeria really going to be that relevant as a major oil producer, or just another of another of the many oil producers while the world moves on to alternative sources of energy and other sources of supply.
And what about its influence, its contributions to the continent? As our representative from the parliament talked about, there is a great history of those contributions. But that is history.
Is Nigeria really playing a major role today in the crisis in Niger on its border, or in Guinea, or in Darfur, or after many many promises making any contributions to Somalia?
The answer is no, Nigeria is today NOT making a major impact, on its region, or on the African Union or on the big problems of Africa that it was making before.
What about its economic influence?
Well, as we have talked about earlier, there is a de-industrialization going on in Nigeria a lack of infrastructure, a lack of power means that with imported goods under globalization, Nigerian factories are closing, more and more people are becoming unemployed and Nigeria is becoming a kind of society that imports and exports and lives off the oil, which does not make it a significant economic entity.
Now, of course, on the negative side, the collapse of Nigeria would be enormous, but is that a point to make Nigeria strategically important?
Years ago, I worked for an Assistant Secretary of State who had the longest tenure in that job in the 1980s and I remember in one meeting a minister from a country not very friendly to the United States came in and was berating the Assistant Secretary on all the evils of the United States and all its dire plots and in things in Africa and was going on and on and finally the Assistant Secretary cut him off and said: “You know, the biggest danger for your relationship with the United States is not our opposition but that we will find you irrelevant.”
The point is that Nigeria can become much less relevant to the United States. We have already seen evidence of it. When President Obama went to Ghana and not to Nigeria, he was sending a message, that Ghana symbolized more of the significant trends, issues and importance that one wants to put on Africa than Nigeria.
And when I was asked by journalists why President Obama did not go to Nigeria, I said “what would he gain from going? Would Nigeria be a good model for democracy, would it be a model for good governance, would he obtain new commitments on Darfur or Somalia or strengthen the African Union or in Niger or elsewhere?”
No he would not, so he did not go.
And when Secretary Clinton did go, indeed but she also went to Angola and who would have thought years ago that Angola would be the most stable country in the Gulf of Guinea and establish a binational commission in Angola.
So the handwriting may already be on the wall, and that is a sad commentary.
Because what it means is that Nigeria’s most important strategic importance in the end could be that it has failed.
And that is a sad sad conclusion. It does not have to happen, but I think that we ought to stop talking about what a great country it is, and how terribly important it is to us and talk about what it would take for Nigeria to be that important and great.
And that takes an enormous amount of commitment. And you don’t need saints, you don’t need leaders like Nelson Mandela in every state, because you are not going to get them.
I served in South Korea in the middle of the 1960s and it was time when South Korea was poor and considered hopeless, but it was becoming to turn around, later to become to every person’s amazement then the eleventh largest economy in the world. And I remember the economist in my mission saying, you know it did not bother him that the leading elites in the government of South Korea were taking 15 – 20 percent off the top of every project, as long as every project was a good one, and that was the difference. The leadership at the time was determined to solve the fundamental economic issues of South Korea economy and turn its economy around.
It has not happened in Nigeria today. You don’t need saints. It needs leaders who say “You know we could be becoming irrelevant, and we got to do something about it.”
Thank you.
Princeton N. Lyman,
Adjunct Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Former U.S. ambassador to South Africa and Nigeria, made these remarks at the Achebe Foundation Colloquium on Nigerian Election at Providence, Rhode Island, USA, on December 11, 2009.
An open letter to the Minister of Interior – a plea for better service at the passport offices.
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings. – Gandhi (1957), An Autobiography
Dear Minister,
Sir, please accept my apologies in advance, for writing to you openly. I considered what would be the best way to reach your exalted office but could think of no better medium than this.
I write to you sir, because we share a mutual interest – the love for Nigeria and care and concern for the plight of its citizens. Sir, I am sure you have these interests at heart because the House of Assembly would not have confirmed your nomination as a Minister if it is not so.
I am concerned, sir, that the current processes at the Passport Offices are not the most efficient and can be made better. Your processes are killing people, they fuel corruption, waste time and de-humanize us, sir. I hope you are still reading sir, as I intend to show you clearly what the experiences of the average Nigerians are at your passport offices and how I came to the above conclusion. Unlike others, I will also go the extra mile to proffer solutions, per-adventure you will consider and implement them.
Knowing that you are an honorable man, I am inclined to believe that it is most likely that you are not currently aware of the situations at the passport offices. In the alternate case that you are aware, I want to believe that you already have your team of eggheads working on resolving the problems associated with this institution that has become a national embarrassment. My letter would then just be a reminder of how urgent that this needs to be resolved.
The unnecessary hardship and treatment that Nigerians are subjected to at the passport office is a grave cause of concern. From any point you look at this, we simply cannot continue to subject our citizen to the sort of treatment currently being meted out at the passport offices and demand better treatment and respect from the consular offices of foreign nations. Let me digress a little, and use an actual experience to buttress my point. A couple of years ago, I sat in a meeting requesting a foreign contractor to comply with some level of Environmental Standards in a project that we were about to execute. The contractor’s project manager retorted that we should not hold them to standards higher than what our Nigerians have demonstrated. He mentioned that he had gone around the country and had seen heaps of rubbish all around with blocked sewers and then questioned our morality in asking him to treat his wastes and effluents before discharging them. My eyes were blood red because the truth hurts. In any case, we made him comply with our standards which were far higher than the Nigerian requirements. Sir, from the above, you will understand why it becomes difficult to expect foreign entities to treat us with respect given the way we treat our citizens.
Added to this is that time is money. Now, let’s forget about the inconsequential me and talk of my Igbo brother from Alaba. He was there too, seeking a passport to pursue his honest trade of importing goods into the country and selling them. He depends on his daily sales for his livelihood and yet he had been made to abandon this to come and spend hours at your offices for a service that shouldn’t take 30mins to provide. Please think of the impact of these wasted hours on the national GDP and our productivity as a nation. This makes us uncompetitive for business sir. With us, were students, some barely old enough to know what was right and wrong. They were there, under the sun, learning from the school of hard knocks. These leaders of tomorrow must have left with the impression that obtaining a passport is a herculean task and that it was normal for a sea of people to be sun dried and soaked in their own sweat to obtain services. What an impression on their young innocent minds!
It was mid-May 2017 and the location was the Passport Office, Ikeja. I had been informed that to pick up my passport, I had to arrive early at the office. I have had a bitter experience getting my data captured a couple of days earlier and had arrived Ikeja at about 7:30am to pick up the passport.
Now the very first challenge was to get a parking space for my vehicle. This was absurd as the Passport Office has a car park. Of course, this has been converted to the waiting area for passport applicants as there is no other place they can stay. Parking, itself, became a drama but after circling the block a few times, I eventually negotiated a space and parked the vehicle. I spent some time relaxing in the car and finally took the less than 3 mins walk to the passport office. I arrived at 8:15am, the office does not start attending to people until 9am. The sight that accosted me was a shock, how come these many people had arrived at the passport office that early? Two categories of client were waiting for the office to be opened – those coming for data capture and to pick up their passports. I was directed to join a line, by the time I registered my name, I already had 186 other Nigerians ahead of me, that early morning.
The wait had begun. How long I was going to wait for, I did not know. So I went ahead and confirmed two other appointments that I had for 1:30pm and another for 3pm. At around 9am, some of the smartest dressed crop of uniformed men and women came out to address the crowd. Sir, by this time, the Equatorial Sun was already out, drenching us with humidity and heat. The Customer Relations Officer was impressive. With her impeccable English she doled out a set of useful information that went on and on. Not many people were listening, they had more serious issues to contend with. The heat was not friendly and the shades were grossly inadequate.
After her came the Special Assistant to the Passport Officer, also with his own “sermon at the passport office”. Seriously, their words were impressive and showed an awareness and understanding of the trauma through which most passport applicant were going. I can’t say that much for their actions. Our waiting continued, and all these while we remained standing on our feet. At least that was true for the majority of the applicants. The seats provided could barely accommodate 100 people yet, the people at that office would be around a thousand.
I thought that the experience could have been made less painful. If the Immigration Office was that determined that we must go through this suffering, it could make it less painful by keeping us entertained. In any case, we did get entertained by the various characters that mill around the office. Looking at the faces of the people there was great distress, hopelessness. Yet Nigerians are the most tolerant of all people, except for the particular case of the mosque where a gentleman got angry and requested to be treated with respect.
The wait was long, tortuous but finally it was mid-day. I remembered the late Fela’s song – suffering and smiling. 49 sitting and 99 standing. Only two fans were provided to cool the multitude and these, that were well at work, had seen better days. Soon, the inevitable happened. It was 12:10pm and right there, while requesting for a drink, she fell. Straight backwards and hit the bare cemented floor. She could have died, bidding bye-bye to the world in your facility as a result of exhaustion. A Nigerian in her mid-thirties with a bulge in her tommy suggesting she was some months pregnant. The intervention of hangers-byes in pouring water on her brought her back to life. The fate of that pregnancy, no one knows. No, not yet. Then came your men, officers of the Immigration Service. It was funny what their response was – they took her details and attended to her immediately. I thought in my mind that it won’t be a bad idea for us all to collapse or die so that we could get deserving attention.
Oh, how religious your folks were sir! It was 1:10pm and the preparation for the mosque service has begun, the little sun shade provided by the tent had to be vacated so that it could be converted to a temporary mosque. When did having prayers in a public institution become the norm and civil servants are allowed to abandon their duties to observe this, when they were not making use of their lunch hour? Into the hot blazing sun we headed. I am sure that the Prophet Mohammed (SAW) wasn’t that wicked and would not have asked the majority of people to sacrifice their comfort for the minority to pray.
It was 1:32pm when numbers 150 to 200 were called so that the search for their passports could be made. I joined the line and made it inside the building. More than 5hrs since I arrived at the gates of the office, I got to sit down for the very first time. Sir, on entering the office, I got accosted with gross inefficiency in your system. In the collection office, there were 8 of your able bodied men and women saddled with the simple process of releasing the passports. There we were, sitting down, waiting to be called to pick the passports but these guys were spending more time chatting on their phones and discussing with their colleagues than they were in attending to us. Of course, it is from the phone calls that they get the various “side-kicks” through which they augment their living. Why would we matter that much? Yet, as I came to be told, the Ikeja Office has better service turnaround period than its Ikoyi counterpart.
At 2:15pm I got called to pick my passport and eventually walked out of that room with my new passport at about 2:20pm. By this time, I had a pressing need to use the rest room. I inquired from your men and I was directed to a corner of the building meant for men to do their thing. I entered the space and all the available 4 slots were locked up. It was the height of the insult. Here I was, having been kept at your premises for upwards of 6 hours, a Nigerian from whose taxes this office is funded yet was prevented from making use of a rest room. Is it that someone in your team is that insensitive that a facility in a public office has to be sealed up from the public for whom the facility is created to serve? I was told that there was a nearby facility for which I would need to pay N100 to use. I just gave up. Isn’t it the height of inhumanity to have such a large crowd here at the instance of the passport office and not provide convenience for them?
Sir, if it lacks measure, it is difficult to control. Do you have the data on the output of your Passport Offices across the nation? For instance, how many passports are issued monthly on the average? If this information is available, then we have a solution to the problems of the offices running out of passports. How? Simply implement the stock re-order level concept. Do you have the information on how many employees it takes to issue one passport? If you do, then we can manage the seemingly large numbers of your staff that are actually acing as a clog to productivity. How? Compare he figures to what obtains in South Africa, Egypt and some other big economies in the world. Do you know how many hours are spent, on average, by each applicant in your offices to obtain a passport? If you do, then we can judge the efficiency of the different offices and provide incentives to encourage the efficient ones and punish the less efficient.
As promised sir, in the next part of this letter I will provide suggestions on how to address the noted problems in this establishment and make it one that we all as Nigerians can be proud of. I really appreciate your having taken time to patiently read this letter and am hopeful that you will do the same for the next part as well.