‘After retirement I found fulfilment in teaching children Quranic / western education’

What year did you retire from NITEL and in what capacity?I retired in December 2005 as a Deputy General Manager in charge of what we called Area10. Area 10 in the MTEL days comprised  Kano, Jigawa and Katsina.  I set up that office and two years later, in October 2003 I went in there to […]

What year did you retire from NITEL and in what capacity?
I retired in December 2005 as a Deputy General Manager in charge of what we called Area10. Area 10 in the MTEL days comprised  Kano, Jigawa and Katsina.  I set up that office and two years later, in October 2003 I went in there to head it. In December 2005 I retired and came to settle in Abuja. I was and still maintaining this house because when I  returned from Lagos  this was where I kept my family while I was being taken from one state to the other. I worked virtually in every part of this country. I was in Lagos for many years and from there I came to Abuja.  I was later posted to Jos from where I was taken to Enugu and later to Kano where I retired.

How would you describe life in retirement?
Life in retirement can be terribly frustrating and painful in Nigeria.  It is more painful when the government you served for many years is not paying you your pension.  I joined P & T when I left secondary school in 1970 in Jos when the civil war was about to end. Afterwards I underwent series of training and was transferred here and there. When you retired, you are a qualified pensioner.  Every document  you possessed is correct because your appointment was gazetted and confirmed.  But after retirement  government just refused to give you your pension.
This is frustrating. When I retired in 2005 during the former president Obasanjo administration the president said we should be given five years pension upfront. First, we were given three years but when we started agitating we were paid the remaining two years pension and that was all we got till now.  We went to court that we were gazetted as government staff and we are entitled to our pension till we die. We won at the High Court but government through the BPE appealed. Why should they appeal what was legitimate to old civil servants of this country? We cannot understand that. Anyway, we are awaiting the appeal court judgment on the matter.
Retirement in Nigeria can be very frustrating but God has a way of doing things. When one is in service you never can tell what will happen afterwards so you should be good to people you come across while in office. I can now see that I was good to people I came across or who came across me while in active service. I was not distributing money because I had no money but I have good will towards people. I gave the little help I can to those I came across. In those days our attention was civil service. Some of us didn’t even know we needed to establish small businesses, even if it was buying and selling. We just concentrated our attention on the job and were living only on the salary. But as God would help me, I was training my children. Today, my children are my saviour by the help of God.  Among them, I have a medical doctor, a veterinary doctor, a micro-biologist, an electrical engineer, a computer engineer and so on. I thank God for the health he has gaven me today because I sympathize with my contemporaries.
Life can be terribly difficult at retirement time. When we returned from Lagos we were allocated this quarters. This building you are seeing used to be MTEL quarters for a category of staff but when we got to higher positions some of us said they were big men and wanted  bigger houses.  But I tell myself what bigger house? Look at me now, my children are not here, my wife is in Kaduna, I am only here with two of my children. My wife comes in almost every weekend but we are eating  well and  are healthy. Old age comes at retirement and that is when all type of diseases start to manifest. If you are the reckless type it is at your retirement that this will manifest.  God saved me I  live a simple life and I am healthy.
 
What have you been doing since you retired?
When I retired I started going to the Quranic school. I was initially doing consultancy services to Digital Bridge Institute on telecoms. I was doing a training programme for their students. It was an ad-hoc  job, it came to an end. I now devoted my time to religious activities. I am teaching some children in the Mosque in both Quranic and western education. I found that it is not because children don’t like mathematics  but because there is nobody to put them through. Teachers in the schools don’t have time to be thorough.  I volunteered  to teach them and I derive satisfaction doing it. I am happy that those that I am teaching are appreciating my effort. Thank God some of them are entering the university now.

At what level did you join the P&T?
I joined as what they called Technician in Training. I was working with our technicians who were doing cable joining, telephone repairs in those days when Jos was under Benue-Plateau State during  the late Gomwalk years.   In those days, we finished secondary school in December and by January 21 I had been interviewed and I started work. Those were the good old days. A secondary school leaver joining government service without any problem.

How was your first day at work like?
I was so excited. I was introduced to various people in various sections. They showed me where I would work and what kind of work I do and who would be my boss. We had the open truck in those days in which we put all our working tools. We would jump into it while going to different places to repair telephones for government and senior civil servants who had phones in their homes. We were to ensure all the telephone services are working by repairing damaged cables, both the underground and overhead ones. That was what we were doing at that time.

What was NITEL like when you were in service?
Life at NITEL was very interesting and very good. We had the monopoly at that time. We were the only one who offered telephone services.  I must tell you that then, there was prudent management. There was seriousness, discipline and commitment. Every NITEL staff knew he or she cannot mess around and cannot mess up the job assigned to them. We had well educated and prominent managers. In those days NITEL was making so much money and government was taking money from it to pay even the military. Then as a staff, your section was just like your personal property or your personal company. When the best of every department was aggregated together we had a lot of profit because a lot of business was going on. The demand for telephone services then kept rising but we could not meet up because we had no equipment in place. They are manufactured overseas and it would take time to put them together before bringing them here for installation, testing and putting them into use. The commitment we had in those days was an asset. The money was coming in and government was benefiting from it. There was no question of no salary. In fact by 24 -25 of every month the salary was in. On occasions like December we were paid salary around 15th of the month. During Sallah festivity we took salary early. The work in NITEL in those days was fantastic. Everybody worked hard for the progress of the organization.  As I said, I started work as a technician in training- the lowest level. Level  4- and my salary was five pounds in 1970. We got increment of either five shillings or six shillings every year.

At what period of your career did you start planning for your retirement?
That was when I got to a managerial level and that was in 1992. That was when we returned from a training programme in Europe. We came to establish the analogue mobile exchange in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Ibadan. I was the Manager  for Operation and Maintenance. I was in charge of the Lagos exchange at  Odunlami street by CMS bus stop.  When in Lagos we discussed retirement with colleagues and later reflected over it and started thinking what to do afterwards. Some of us didn’t think they would get to retirement age because a lot of things happened along the line. Either their appointment get terminated or were dismissed. I knew many of them that were dismissed because of one misbehaviour or the other. At that time I decided to concentrate on training my children. I got them into good schools and  sat down with them to look at their work at home. It happened that my wife did not come from a home where all they know is get married, stay at home with the children, cook for the people, welcome visitors. She came from Kano and over there you have some people who are business minded. She has a relation who was already a businessman so we were making some contribution to that man’s business. Along the line, I thank God my children are doing fine. I have children of some relations with me who are in the university and some have graduated. I have a lot of people around me and they are contributing to my happiness in retirement.

How were you able to handle the anxiety of retirement while in active service?
When you put the fear of God in your life style and  your working career you will not do anything that will harm the reputation that you have built over the years. Let me give you an example. When I was in Lagos the analogue mobile exchange was a kind of status symbol for Lagosians. Everybody wanted to own a mobile phone because it was new at that time. It cost about N145,000 to get one then. I was at the control room of the exchange. Every subscriber’s number was in my register. We had about 10,000 lines. Lagos is a place where people will do good to you if you do good to them. But they will not mind to destroy you if you are extorting them. I had a colleague then who enjoyed making money. One day he called me to say we should take advantage of our offices to make money. I told him whatever he wanted to do he should feel free. He thought I was not cooperating so he rallied round our junior staff to help him in the fraud. It was during a military regime and along the line they got exposed that they were making money from government service by cloning people’s number. You have a number and someone else has it and because it is your name that is in the register the bill comes to you. Government set up a task force to check this excess and they arrested some of them who later pointed at my colleague as the one who gave them the authority on the numbers and he was arrested.  When they asked whether I was involved because I was in charge of the register they said I did not know what they were doing. I was not even there when they exonerated me. They were dismissed and I was in the service till I retired.

What would you say  was your sad experience while in office?
The sad side of my career was when I was denied my promotion for many years.  My juniors became my seniors. Somebody who did NYSC under me, whom I taught the job was put ahead of me as my director. In the Quran, God says you can put your child as your oga. He knows you are there, just take it easy. God knows better than anyone. That verse in the Quran was my guide. When he was made my boss I called him my boss and  he called me oga. People were wondering and some said if it happened to them they won’t accept it. But to me it was nothing, it is a government job they can put anybody there.  So I didn’t allow it to bother me. I worked with him wholeheartedly. That was a sad moments but later I put my hope in Almighty God and it never bothered me. Some other sad moments was when I was making effort on my educational advancement and some people were not happy about it. They wanted to cut it short or prevent me because they saw it  as a threat.  They feared when  I  get the education I am  likely to become their boss. These are some of the dilemma I went through while in service. But thank God at the end they came to me to say I was gentle and patient.  At the end I was the only one that a sendforth party was organized for. The rest of them were forced out  en mass at retirement.

As a telecom engineer, now that we have many of the telephone service providers your experience should be needed. Is there any of them you are offering consultancy service to?
What we don’t understand in this country is that these GSM companies are owned by foreigners and they don’t like experienced natives as such. They don’t want experienced natives that will prevent them from bringing in their so-called experts in a way that will affect their capital flight. When MTN was coming up , I was in Lagos and somebody introduced me to them.  I was giving them data in establishment of business stations.  The promise they made was that when they establish fully they would want me to come and work with them. When they started they invited me for interviews twice in Lagos, once in Abuja  and at the end of the day they didn’t get back to me. Some of the boys I trained and worked under me are working with them now. The experience they gathered from our own work place is what they are using over there. After I made some efforts and saw that they were not really interested in hiring or giving me a job I just forgot about them. All along I never lived an extravagant life, I live simple, I don’t want to be in the public eye. I just wanted to live quietly, move around without being noticed. That was my life and that was the way I was brought up.

When would you say NITEL started having problems?
That was when Obasanjo privatized it. They brought in El Rufai. They also brought some people from Europe to come and manage NITEL. Many of our senior staff were retired. The people they brought met plenty of money in NITEL’S account but they never added one line to NITEL and the money got finished. This was when the fortunes of NITEL began to decline. We were all over the country, even in the local government, wherever you go you would see telephone.  I have sympathy for our country and our so-called leaders who have no foresight for the future generation.
The International Telecommunication Union has frequencies for each country. It is a natural gift from God. The air we are breathing is electromagnetic.  We just need to control it and direct it to carry our telecommunication services. Every country has its own frequency with which to make money. But what happened here in Nigeria? We had our own company but we went to bring in people from outside to come and use it.  No Nigerian will go to South Africa  and be allowed to establish a telecommunication company there. They will simply tell him to get out of there because it is a money spinning industry.
In fact, it doesn’t depreciate like oil and others but it appreciates. We only have to control it to make life easy for the masses. All the so-called GSM companies in Nigeria are in the hands of foreigners and they are using Ghana Must Go or sack  to carry money out of this country. By now NITEL or MTEL would have so spread. There would have been all kinds of different companies that would have sprung up for Nigerians to work in and get paid as at when due. Unfortunately, NITEL was sold as scrap at a giveaway price or for free. All the equipments of those days have became outdated and rusty.
But funny enough, if we could get NITEL back today, believe me we will revive it. The experience we had  was a grassroot experience so we were used to the environment and everywhere.  If we get it back today we don’t need government money to revive it.  In fact, we will be making money for government and even Nigerians. This is our dilemma.