SERVICE DELIVERY IN A COUNTRY OF EXCUSES
A close relative of mine once agreed to assist me to buy a car from the United States. We agreed on the specifications, price and terms of payment. A few months after I made the first instalment of the payment, I got a call from his partner explaining that they could not supply the car I had requested for and pleaded that I accept one of lower quality at the same price. I have been managing with the car whenever I get home until a month ago when the battery started failing. I then asked my driver to buy a new one from a nearby mechanic village. I gave him the specifications and the amount he asked for. Few hours later he came back explaining that he only saw a different brand and pleaded that it is the same as the one I had requested for and that I should manage it. I ignored him and continued with my browsing, as I had to sort out issues with a cargo of books I had ordered from the States also.
Everything was going well with the cargo until it got into Lagos. The cargo company called me from time to time to change the storyline until their cover ups were exhausted. They had to start begging me to accept the cargo two weeks after the date we had agreed initially. I was very, very, angry and tried to call my wife to complain. My calls kept dropping even as my credit load kept reducing. I ran to a nearby telecommunications shop to complain and the attendant pleaded with me to exercise patience with the network problem. On my way home, I branched to my bank to cash a cheque. I waited for four hours in vain as the bank had no network all through the day.
It was a Friday and so I had no cash to spend for the weekend. Because of that singular difficulty, and no funds to buy my tickets, I missed many important weekend engagements in Lagos and Abuja. As I sat absentmindedly in my hotel room, I began to ask myself why we are all not dedicated in this country. Everybody has one excuse or the other to give why he/she cannot deliver. From the mechanic to the driver, from the telecommunications operator to the regulator, from the banker to the shipping agent, from a contractor to a supplier, from the airline to a porter – everyone is busy telling stories, stories and stories. Why? I have tried to imagine how much this attitude has cost me in the past one year. Now I leave you to imagine what it is costing us as a country.
I have often blamed our political class. Yes, they deserve the greater proportion of the blame but what of our citizens? After all, politics is a mirror image of society. We do not care about service. We always accept excuses because we do not deliver at our own ends. Otherwise how would someone pay for an item but accept to be supplied with something similar. Show me another country where the kind of service disruptions and goof going on in our telecommunications sector is tolerated? Tell me where else you can pay as much as we do in Nigeria for internet access and readily lose the whole credit just downloading one document? I need an explanation why we have suddenly become a nation that is very tolerant of incompetence? Why are we always willing to replace the word exact with similar? Is there a reason why we give excuses for service inefficiency and even give justifications for service blunders by keeping quiet?
There is a lot that can happen at the political level but while we wait for that, shall we not start to act within our tiny area of control? I do not necessarily need a government policy to deliver with precision and on agreed datelines within my little space. I contend that the biggest validation for demanding efficiency comes when we are all able to offer exactly that. We need to stop accepting excuses. No way. There is nothing impolite about demanding value and insisting on it, every time when you part with money, no matter how little. If we are unable to demand horizontal accountability over little things, then private sector operators, our political class and government institutions – indeed everyone whose duty it is to provide one service or the other will continue to take us for a ride.
Written By Uche Igwe