Newman, a British expatriate worker posted for a 3 year assignment
for a certain oil company in Nigeria recently shared his story and experience so far in the Nigerian society on his blog.
“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 remarked “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-rocketing 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 sizable 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 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 for 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 c ome 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.
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 sports 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 Hmmmm…
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 out
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 to Nigeria go, that’s not too bad.