The end of an assignment in Nigeria (4)

For every Nigerian who is honest, well-mannered, and diligent you’ll find a hundred whose only goal is to get some money whilst expending the minimum amount of effort possible. If they can use personal connections, lies, or trickery in lieu of learning a useful skill and applying it, they’ll take that option every time. It’s […]

For every Nigerian who is honest, well-mannered, and diligent you’ll find a hundred whose only goal is to get some money whilst expending the minimum amount of effort possible. If they can use personal connections, lies, or trickery in lieu of learning a useful skill and applying it, they’ll take that option every time. It’s a numbers thing: if 50% of Nigerians were more like 10% of them, the country would be okay. And that’s the fundamental problem of Nigeria summed up in one sentence: way too many dickheads.
When I was bored in our morning meetings — which was on most days — I would canvas my team’s opinion on certain things, often the state of the country. They were by and large in despair. Nigerians are famously optimistic, but this is often through desperation. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than on the occasion when a bank put a Christmas tree up on a roundabout with “presents” at the bottom, and the next morning all the presents had been ripped open. If somebody thinks a box under a tree on a roundabout contains an X-Box, then you’ve gone way beyond optimism and into desperation or delusion.
My lads were a happy enough bunch — as Nigerians usually are — but had no hope of things getting better any time soon. I ventured the suggestion that a return to military dictatorship might be on the cards, and I got no objection. One of them explained that during the times of military dictatorship, it was only a handful of people at the top creaming off money. Now, with democracy, it’s tens of thousands. And during the military dictatorship, crime was much lower, and few had concerns about personal security. Democracy is all well and good, but I’ve often said that it is a means to an end, not an end in itself. I am sure the world will howl with outrage and impose sanctions should Nigeria undergo another military coup, but few can deny that democracy is failing to deliver peace, prosperity and basic services to Nigeria.
So what did I think of my time in Nigeria? In truth, I didn’t like it, but not for the reasons you might think. The worst thing, by far, was not being able to go anywhere and do anything at the weekends. The security situation did not allow us to travel beyond a very restricted area of Lagos, and even if we could there wasn’t much to do. I like walking about with a camera, camping, exploring by going to a town and drinking lots, skiing, driving around, visiting people, riding a bike, and hill walking. There was no scope to do any of that in Lagos, for reasons usually related to security. That meant for weekend after weekend after weekend there was nothing to do but watch sport on TV, go to the gym, and lie by the pool. Those with families did whatever families do; the single guys went to bars and clubs and picked up Nigerian girls; guys like me — married, single status — didn’t do very much at all. I used the time well, learned French, read countless books, improved on the guitar, and got fit. Nigeria has excellent weather, and even better pineapples, but I would much rather have spent my time doing something else in another place.
Those restrictions were by far the worst aspect of my Nigerian assignment. Insofar as the daily life in Lagos went, with all its challenges, that was manageable. You get used to anything eventually, and at some point I was able to shrug off almost everything Nigeria had to throw at me. I never quite got used to the traffic, so used to plan my day to avoid the worst of it. Dealing with the Nigerians took some getting used to, a process that was eased considerably when I figured out they weren’t the most difficult factor to consider. There’s rarely any point in getting upset about locals anywhere, because they are the raw material you have to work with. If you go to Nigeria, you will have to work with Nigerians, so deal with it. Some aspects of it were frustrating no doubt, but what can I do? Nothing.
What infuriated me more was that some of the expats I encountered were hopelessly unqualified and too inexperienced to be there. Nigeria is a difficult place to attract talent to, and as such — like a lot of oil towns worldwide — those who end up coming are usually way below the standard that should be demanded. Unbelievably, incompetence and stupidity seem to be imported at great expense into Nigeria. This annoyed me considerably, as it did when I encountered a similar state of affairs in Sakhalin. If you are going to come into somebody else’s country on the basis that you have skills they don’t, you’d better make damned sure you have those skills and they are on full view. If I had a quid for every time I’ve seen somebody fail this basic test in the oil business, I could retire and bump yachts in Monaco with Roman Abramovich. I’m pretty sure I upset a few people in Nigeria, and maybe there were a few who didn’t want me there, but nobody could accuse me of not adding value.
Nobody could point the finger at me and ask “Why, exactly, do we keep this guy?” If nobody else, the lads in my team didn’t mind me. I gave them direction, support and cover, and got somewhere close to the best out of them. What infuriated me more than anything was coming across a Nigerian with a reputation for being useless, and on further investigation learning that they’d never been given a job description, never been given any meaningful direction, had no understanding of the context of their job in the department or the department in the company, and had just been plonked at a desk and expected to do something. I came across this far more than I should have, and it pissed me off. Fair enough, if somebody is useless then call them useless; but first you have to give them every opportunity to succeed, and only then can you call them useless if they don’t perform. Hey, you could even call this practice management! There was a serious lack of it in Nigeria. How many half-decent Nigerians are shoved in the corner of an office and written off as useless in this manner I don’t know, but I’ll bet it’s a lot, and it does the place a serious disservice.
As final proof that I didn’t dislike the place that much, I signed up to another three years of involvement when I had the opportunity to get away from Nigeria for good. I learned some things during my assignment in Lagos, and that knowledge is useful. I know Nigeria, and what it’s like to work with Nigerian companies and Nigerian people on a Nigerian project. A lot of people don’t. I’m used to it; it doesn’t hold any mystery or reason for fear as it did when I first arrived almost three years ago.
I’ll be back there at various points in the future, but honestly I hope I don’t have to live there permanently again for the reasons I stated. I don’t consider it three years wasted — far from it — and I didn’t hate it. There were moments, plenty of them, where I positively enjoyed it. And as assignments in Nigeria go, that’s not too bad.

Concluded
Newman, a British expat-riate who had worked in Nige-ria, first posted this on:
www.desertsun.co.uk.