An expatriate's story of Nigeria.

So he may have tonguelashed both the leadership and citizenry of the country, and even zipped my mouth because of the stark frankness of the tale. Still is it as so bad as he painted it? Read till the end to make your judgement on the post. If u've any practical solutions to it, why not drop it in the comment box.

"The End of an Assignment in
Nigeria.

Okay, so now I’ve got a post about
Melbourne out of the way it’s time
for me to say a little something
about Nigeria. With the exception
of a week in October when I need to
clear out my apartment, I’ve pretty
much left Nigeria. My assignment
there officially finished on 31st July,
although I will have to return for
business trips over the course of
the next 3 years because the project
I am on in Melbourne is for Nigeria.

Somebody once said that there is
much to write about Russia, but
when one tries you can never find
the words to write the first line.
Nigeria is much the same, and
indeed there are many similarities
between the two countries.  I have
tried to describe Nigeria to people
who have never been there, and
failed on most occasions. A
colleague of mine stopped telling
people back home about the place
because he was getting a reputation
as somewhat of a bullshitter, even
though he didn’t exaggerate
anything.  I was at a seminar in
Paris some time ago and I was
describing the working life in
Nigeria to a group of Frenchmen.
One of them quipped that I was
exaggerating and that “it couldn’t be
that bad” , which prompted another
Frenchman, sitting beside me, to
nudge me in the ribs and remark
“wait until he does his Nigerian
assignment” .  He was based in Port
Harcourt.

Nigeria has a reputation, and I knew
about it before I arrived. Most of
what I’d heard proved to be
completely true. Almost all of it, in
fact.  To get a general picture of
Nigeria, just read the news, and
you’ll not be far wrong.  It isn’t a
place like Russia, the US, or France
which surprise visitors when they
see the contrast between what
they’ve imagined (based on
exposure to their tourists or foreign
policy) and the individuals they
encounter. But beyond the general
picture, there are some subtleties
worth mentioning.
It’s first important to understand
that degree is as important as form.
Russians, faced with criticism of
corruption in their country, often
retort that corruption is found
everywhere, even in the UK. Which
is true, but in many countries it
does not infest every authority,
office, and institute like it does in
Russia. It is the degree, or extent,
of corruption which makes Russia
different from the UK, not the form.

Understanding this concept is
important in describing Nigeria.
There is no getting away from the
fact that corruption in Nigeria has
infested almost every aspect of life,
work, and society.  I can’t think of a
single area where I didn’t encounter
a scam of some sort. Some of them
were pretty normal – policemen
hassling motorists for bribes, for
example – with others being less
common elsewhere.  Filling brand
named alcohol bottles with local
hooch was widespread practice.
Not
so bad in itself, but these were being
sold through supposedly legitimate
suppliers and turning up in
established bars.  Others were
unique to Nigeria. I knew a guy in
charge of oil shipments for a foreign
oil company who received a call
from somebody in the authorities
saying he was not going to release
the multi-million dollar cargo until
somebody had bought his cousin
$10 worth of phone credit. My
acquaintance found himself going to
the shop, buying a phone card, and
handing it over to some scruffy
bloke who showed up at his office in
order to allow his crude oil out of
the country.
The corruption, theft, and graft can
take many forms: falsifying a CV (I
don’t mean enhancing, I mean
pretending you’re a Lead Piping
Engineer of 12 years experience
when actually, until yesterday, you
were a fisherman); selling positions
in a company; stealing diesel from
the storage tanks you’re paid to
protect; issuance of false material
certificates; impersonating an
immigration officer to access an
office, from which you then tap up
the people within to fund your
latest venture; selling land which
isn’t yours; deliberately running
down the country’s refining capacity
in order to partake in the lucrative
import of fuels; falsifying delivery
notes of said refined fuels in order
to receive greater government
subsidies; deliberately restricting
the country’s power generation
capacity in order to benefit from the
importation of generators (which
must be run on imported fuel); theft
of half-eaten sandwiches and
opened drink containers from the
office fridge; tinkering with fuel
gauges at petrol stations to sell
customers short; conspiring with
company drivers to issue false
receipts indicating more fuel was
supplied than actually was;
supplying counterfeit safety
equipment; falsifying certificates
related to professional competence
(e.g. rope access work); paying
employees less than stipulated in
their contract (or not at all); cloning
satellite TV cards, meaning the
legitimate user gets their service cut
off when the other card is in use
(the cards are cloned by the same
people who issue the genuine
cards); the list is literally endless.
There is no beginning or end to
corruption in Nigeria, it is a
permanent fixture.
Nepotism is rife: family members
are employed and promoted before
anyone else. Outright theft is rife:
from a pen lying on a desk, to
billions from the state coffers.
Dishonesty is rife: from the state
governors to the street urchin, lying
to enrich yourself is the norm.  You
name the scam, it is being done in
Nigeria.  Eventually, nothing
surprises you.
As I said before, you’ll find such
practices everywhere, but to
nowhere near the extent found in
Nigeria.
Apparently it wasn’t always like
this.  There was a time, probably
from around the 1970s to 1990s,
when Nigeria had a reasonably
diverse economy. Besides the oil
and gas, they had agriculture,
manufacturing and assembly
(Peugeot set up an assembly plant in
Nigeria in the mid-1970s), brewing
(there is a both a Guinness and a
Heineken brewery), refining,
construction, and pharmaceuticals.
Some of these survive today. There
were decent universities, and
students wishing to graduate had to
apply themselves. Security wasn’t
much of a concern to the average
citizen.
I don’t know the details, but at
some point in the 1990s one of the
military dictators decided to flood
the place with oil money in order to
buy support. This had the effect of
drowning every other form of
enterprise and ensuring that oil and
gas was the only game in town. This
is bad in itself, but by no means
unique to Nigeria. What was worse
is that this quickly instilled a
mentality across Nigeria that there
was a lot of money up for grabs, and
getting your hands on it wasn’t in
any way related to honest efforts or
applying yourself to something
constructive.  Nigeria became a
place where if you’re not getting
your hands on some of the oil
money, either directly or indirectly,
then you’re going nowhere.  With
oil money washing over the whole
country like a tidal wave, soon
everyone was trying to secure their
own piece of the action, using fair
means or foul. Imagine throwing a
huge box of sweets into a playgroup
shouting “Grab what you can!” , and
the chaos that ensues will be similar
to what happened to Nigeria on a
national scale.
At least, this is what I gather
happened – I may be wrong – but
for sure, the current situation
reflects what I’ve described. The
economy is funded almost
exclusively from oil and gas
revenues, and everything else is
merely feeding off that.  The new
hotels in Lagos, the growth of
capital city of Abuja, the
importation of luxury goods, the
Audi and Porsche dealerships, the
sky-rocketting real estate prices, the
money earmarked for infrastructure
projects, the increase in flight
passengers, all of it is directly or
indirectly linked to the oil money.
Okay, maybe there is some
hyperbole in there. Agriculture still
makes up the lion’s share of GDP,
and the services sector is booming.
Advertising is a big industry in
Lagos, although the most common
thing you see advertised is
advertising space. But nobody is
going to get anywhere herding
cattle, picking pineapples, or
working in a sawmill. Even the
owners won’t be earning that much,
not if that’s their only income.
There is very little opportunity to
get rich, or even advance, unless
you are somehow connected to the
supply of oil money.
One of the results of this national
free-for-all is the formation of
groups, societies, associations, and
unions whose raison d’être is to
obtain as much money and benefits
for their members as possible.  This
isn’t much different from Europe in
respect of trade unions, but groups
and subgroups form at micro-levels
with sometimes comical precision.
The Lagos Association of Road
Maintenance Engineers, Roundabout
and Lay-by Division, 4th
Department. The Nigerian
Association of Water Truck Drivers,
Lagos Chapter.  Membership of one
or more of these associations is
both essential and compulsory:
essential because an individual
would get trampled very quickly in
the general melee of Nigeria, and
compulsory in the sense that you
have almost no chance of being
allowed to quietly ply your trade
without paying dues to some group
or other. It’s not clear what the
legal standing of a lot of these
groups is, but it’s often hard to tell
how they differ from a standard
extortion racket. One of the most
powerful unions in Lagos, the
transport union, used to shake
down any okada (motorcycle taxi)
driver passing through their
checkpoints, claiming the money
was used “to protect them from the
police”.  I doubt the money was
used in such a manner, but people
do need protection from the police
in Lagos. Not that the okada drivers
had any say in the matter:
membership was automatic, and the
union muscle would beat any non-
compliant driver or confiscate his
vehicle.  The power of the oil and
gas workers unions is legendary,
ensuring their members enjoy pay
and benefits which are the highest
of any local staff in the world, and
often outstrip those of the
expatriates.
This in itself might not be so
damaging, but ubiquitous to all
competing factions is a rapacity the
likes of which I doubt can be found
anywhere else on such a scale.
There is a culture so prevalent that
it is a defining characteristic of
Nigeria whereby no amount is ever
enough, and no sum too small to be
pilfered. There comes a point in the
career of most people who have
gotten rich, either legitimately or
otherwise, where they stop chasing
the small stuff and are only
interested in adding to their pile if
the increase will be substantial. The
police chief of a sizeable Thai resort
town has his fingers in many pies,
but he’s not interested in shaking
down street vendors. His minions
might in order to supplement their
salaries, but generally once the boss
has his cut of most of the action,
he’s not interested in sweeping up
every last baht. As a result,
commerce can continue relatively
unmolested. The same is roughly
true amongst the Sheikhs of the
Middle East. Bung the Crown Prince
a few million for the contract, and
he’ll allow the project activities to
go ahead pretty freely. He’s not
interested in making an extra $10k
by insisting you hire his brother’s
lorry fleet to transport the gravel.
Such restraint may also be
practical: the dodgy official in the
UK isn’t going to be interested in
taking pennies if he risks getting
fired or going to jail, he’ll have a
minimum price he’ll work for.
But Nigeria has the same problem I
saw in Russia: an almost
pathological insistence of securing
for yourself 100% of everything that
is available, and not a kopek or
kobo less. I have observed before
that Russians would rather have
100% of nothing than 50% of
something, and the same is true –
but on a far greater scale – in
Nigeria.  The inequality in Nigeria is
horrific. The middle-classes are
tiny, those who are neither stinking
rich nor mired in poverty. As it
happens, most of the Nigerians I
worked with fell into this category:
lucky enough to have well-paying
jobs, but not ordering Porsche
Cayennes for each family member.
Statistically, almost all Nigerians
are dirt poor. A very few are
stinking rich.  Again, a manageable
problem in itself, but the rich
haven’t finished yet. Indeed,
they’re only just getting started. I
spoke to a couple of Angolans in a
seminar once, and they said that
although their ruling classes had
enriched themselves immeasurably,
they were at least spending some
money on the country, and
improvements were noticeable. The
reason the Russians accept with a
shrug the siloviki helping
themselves to millions is because
they (rightly) feel this is inevitable
and – more importantly – life is
actually improving in Russia and has
been doing so since they came to
power. Sure, it’s a slow
improvement and life is still hard,
but they are at least moving in the
right direction (for how long is a
discussion for another post).  There
have been improvements in
infrastructure in Russia, the new
Sheremetovo airport to name one
example.
By contrast – and I challenge any
Nigerian reading this to disagree –
there have been no discernible
improvements in Nigeria in the past
decade (outside of Abuja, where all
the politicians happen to live).  The
infrastructure is crumbling,
electricity shortages abound, Lagos
airport is a national disgrace,
project after project gets sanctioned
but rarely started, never mind
completed, before the funds
disappear, and unemployment is
rocketing. I heard somewhere that
2m people are added to the
workforce every year in Nigeria.  To
do what, exactly? There are no
jobs. One source of employment for
young men was to drive okadas,
until they abruptly got banned in
Lagos last year. The roads are now
much better, but you now have tens
of thousands of young men with no
source of income and no hope of a
job. Since the ban came into effect,
crime – robberies, car-jackings,
burglaries – have increased by an
order of magnitude, even in the rich
neighbourhoods of Lagos previously
thought to be safe. It’s not difficult
to see why.
Meanwhile, Nigerian senators – of
whom there are 109 – enjoy an
official package worth $1.5m per
year, which they recently requested
to be increased to $2.2m per year.
By contrast, the US President gets
an annual salary of $400k. Given
the unofficial incomes of a Nigerian
senator through graft and
backhanders is probably 3-5 times
that, we can probably estimate most
of these guys are taking home
something in the order of $4-5m
each year. Yet they put in for a 46%
increase, in a country where 45% of
the population lives beneath the
poverty line. This is hardly
surprising for a group of politicians,
and far from unique to Nigeria. The
problem is, this behaviour is
repeated through every strata of
society from the very top of the
government to the lowest street
urchin: whatever is there, I want all
of it; and I want more. I saw
wealthy middle-class Nigerians
move to ensure drivers did not
enjoy a fringe benefit worth about
$10 per week. If you threatened to
report a low-level official for
corruption, he would usually
tremble with fear of his boss finding
out: not because his boss shuns
corruption, but because he will want
to know why the proceeds of this
particular scam haven’t been
coming to him .  We already had the
example of a multi-million dollar oil
cargo being held up until
somebody’s relative received a kick-
back worth $10. If any amount of
new money arrives in the economy
– due to a new oil project, for
example – those who are already
wealthy, via their societies,
organisations, unions, and political
connections will ensure 100% of
that new money will go to them.
Insofar as sharing and dividing the
spoils goes, it is between groups
who are already of the same wealth.
If any trickles down to the next
layer, it is almost by accident, and to
be corrected at the first
opportunity.
I came to the conclusion about 2
years into my assignment that
Nigeria is probably the only
genuinely classless society I have
seen. Class is very different from
wealth. Upper class people can be
dirt poor (bankrupt dukes) and
lower class people can be fabulously
rich (Russian oligarchs). Class is
about behaviour and attitudes, not
wealth (a point made very well in
Kate Fox’s excellent book Watching
the English). And insofar as
behaviour goes, I didn’t see a shred
of difference between the top
politicians, down through the
officials in the national authorities,
through the middle class
professionals, through the service
providers, right down to the area
boys. The behaviour was identical
across all strata: I want more
money, and I will do absolutely
anything to get it. If you were to
replace the politicians – let’s say our
109 senators from before – with 109
random people from the Nigerian
citizenry, you would get no change
in behaviour. You could repeat the
experiment a thousand times, and
you would get no change.  There is
no ruling class in Nigeria, there is
just a set of rulers. Where any
change is expected to come from I
don’t know.
I believe one of the root causes is
the bizarre situation where being
dishonest is not socially frowned
upon.  Not really, anyway. If
somebody is caught with his hand in
the till, he is not shunned by his
peers.  The whole situation is
treated with utter indifference, and
sometimes admiration (if the scam
is particularly imaginative). Societal
pressure plays an enormous role in
shaping the behaviour of a
population, probably more so than
the brute force of the law, and
whilst all Nigerians complain about
the crime and dishonesty so
prevalent in their country (it affects
them far more than the expats),
they remain utterly silent when a
perpetrator is identified from
within their peer group. At best,
you’ll get a shrug and a statement to
the effect of “that’s just how it is”.
If you’re a Nigerian caught running
a scam against your employer, your
colleagues aren’t going to think any
less of you.
In fact, the only behaviour I
managed to identify which would
cause a Nigerian to be shunned by
his peers and made an outcast, is if
he decided he wasn’t a believer and
therefore wasn’t going to be
showing up in church (or mosque)
any more. I don’t think I met a
single Nigerian who didn’t attend
either church or mosque, and
religion plays an enormous –
possibly the key – role in Nigerian
society.  I’m not going to go into this
topic, mainly because I’m not
reflexively anti-religion, but I do
suspect that a lot of Nigerians justify
unsavoury behaviour during the
week by going to church on Sunday
and washing themselves of sin. In
this respect, the place is very similar
to the Gulf States.
Now a reminder of what I said at
the beginning of this post. Degree
matters. You will find every type of
individual in Nigeria, including the
kind, funny, generous, honest, and
everything else that is good in a
person.  You’ll find lots of them too.
I had the pleasure of working with
some great individuals, who were
genuinely skilled, could apply
themselves, held positions on merit,
and were extremely well-mannered
and respectful.  The team of
Nigerians I managed was one of the
nicest bunch of people you’d ever
hope to meet, and easy to manage as
well. (My theory is that engineers
are often like this: if you’re bone-
idle and want to earn money
dishonestly, there are easier things
to do than an engineering degree.)
The problem these decent people
have is that they are vastly
outnumbered by those who are not.
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. I remain far
from convinced that many Nigerians
would not welcome such an event.
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 Nigerians 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 3 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 3 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 3 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.
This entry was posted in Nigeria."

Culled from: www.desertsun.co.uk