Mr. Walter S. Rogers
Institute of Current World Affairs
522 Fifth Avenue
New York 36, New York
May 16, 1955
Malta
Dear Mr. Rogers:
[continued from Notes On Nigeria I]
Africa is riddled with inefficiency, but in Nigeria it surpasses any territory I have yet seen. The local telegraph service is described as “hopeless.” Often it takes several days, or even a week, for a telegram to reach a town a few miles away. Service between Lagos and the other main centers sometimes is interrupted for days at a time. Business firms and government agencies are staffed with Africans and there is little or no European supervision. My experience was that it was always difficult and sometimes impossible to deal with African clerks and officials. Either there is unbelievable confusion, uncomprehending ignorance or outright hostility.
One time I waited in Barclays Bank, Lagos, for an hour and fifteen minutes while four clerks went through the otherwise simple process of converting a dollar bank draft into sterling. With great effort, they would draw the figures and words on the cash and audit slips. Then they would study the slips for five minutes, arguing among themselves. Finally they would conclude that there had been a mistake and they would tear the slips up and start all over again. The European in charge would dart over frequently, mutter some angry words, put them on the right track, then return to his desk. He wound up handling the transaction himself while the four clerks glared at him, seemingly convinced that this was another instance of imperialistic oppression.
At other times I would explain what I wanted to an African clerk or official. After repeating it a few times, it would dawn on me that the African was not comprehending anything I said. I would look around desperately for a European and if there was none, I would have to forget about the matter.
“It’s fantastic what goes on here,” a British businessman said. You tell a clerk to send so many drums of oil to a customer. Then you come back later and say, ‘Did you send those drums?’
“The clerk will look straight at you and without a flicker of the eye—mark you, that is important, without a flicker of the eye—he will say he sent them. You say, ‘Fine’.
“Then a few days later you get a rocket from the customer saying where’s the oil. You go back to the clerk and say, ‘You did send that oil, didn’t you?’ He’ll say, ‘Oh, yes I sent it,’ looking you straight in the face.
“You get suspicious. You check the shipments and you find that the oil was never sent. You go back to the clerk and confront him with this. He’ll look you right in the eye and say nonchalantly, ‘Oh, I’m sending it now.’”
“Don’t you fire these clerks?” I asked the businessman.
“What’s the use,” he said. “The next one would be just the same.” Then, with a sneer, he added, “That’s Nigerianization for you.”
In Lagos and elsewhere in Nigeria you also have to cope with hostility and rudeness from clerks and officials in government and private offices. This rudeness is not only directed against Europeans, but against other Africans as well. An African reader recently wrote to the Daily Times, a Lagos newspaper, as follows:
“A few days ago I had occasion to transact what I had imagined would be business of five minutes’ duration. It took the lordly counter-clerk ninety minutes to attend to a dozen of us. The policeman, the shop assistant, the counter-clerk, the nurse, the salesman and even the telephone operator is not ready to attend to you in time with courtesy or politeness, unless you have the courage to walk into the adjoining office of the local representative of British imperialism and seek the aid of a white expatriate before you complaint will be effective.
“And here I am tempted to ask whether in self-governing Nigeria duty will be performed freely, readily and willingly for its on sake or only for fear of the consequences of default.”
One time I went into the main Lagos parcel post office and was told to come back the next day. It was 4:50 p.m. “We’re closing in ten minutes,” an insolent clerk said.
A young British civil engineer told me he came across a road accident some months before. A small bus had gone off the road and plunged down a ravine, injuring several African passengers. “There was a hospital just up the road, so I raced up there in my car,” the engineer said. “I told the African nurses to come quickly. Do you know what they said? They said, ‘No, we’re going off duty in five minutes.’
“I returned to the scene without them. African policeman and I stopped a passing lorry and we asked the African driver to take the injured to the next town. The driver refused. He said he was through work for the day and was on his way home. He finally took them, but only after we threatened to tell the crowd about his attitude and turn them on him.”
But there is a way of getting things done in Nigeria. That is by means of “dash.” Dash signifies anything from a gift or tip to an outright bribe. There seems to be no real distinction between the two.
In the old days, no one would approach a chief or any other important person without giving him a gift. You couldn’t expect him to listen to your complaint or grant you a favor unless you did something for him. Dash was part of the social code and it meant good manners.
These days some incidents I encountered savoured more of rapacious exaction than of courtesy. One time, while driving just outside Lagos, I came to a public bridge across a public road. There was a gate across it and it was locked. A by-stander said we would have to walk across the bridge and ask the African road foreman to open the gate. “Oh, that means they’ll want money,” an African hitchhiker with me said.
We crossed the bridge and I asked the road foreman to open the gate. He stood there in silence for some time, eyeing me uneasily, then he slowly went back and opened the gate. It seemed as if he might have been debating whether to try his little racket on a European, and had decided against it.
On another occasion, when I went to a customs house to pay import duty so I could sell my car in Nigeria, the clerks let it be known through a hanger-on that they wanted “dash” for completing the transaction. I refused and an angry argument ensued. Soon all of the clerks were bellowing insults. “It’s a black man’s country and if you don’t like it get out,” they screamed, neatly turning the issue from cue of attempted extortion for performing a public service to that of race.
It seems that bribery and corruption and not confined to junior grade officials and clerks. Stories are rife in Lagos about such doings in high places and the two main political parties regularly accuse each other of wholesale misdeeds.
Those British officials still remaining in Nigeria are disgusted by the situation. They have very high standards for public service and they look on anything else with horror. A few British officials, while admitting that corruption exists, minimize its importance. After all, they argue, corruption goes on in the United States, yet it is not of the utmost importance as far as the country as a whole is concerned.
But there is an important difference between U. S. corruption and that in Nigeria. U. S. corruption stems largely from the fact that too few of the best people choose politics or the civil service as a career. Particularly at the municipal level, politics and the civil service are largely the domain of the ward heeler and even the semi-criminal type. But in Nigeria public service is in the hands of the “educated” men. They are the local elite and they stand as far apart from the bush tribesmen as a university professor stands from a river ward committeeman in Chicago.
Perhaps the situation will remedy itself in time. Or perhaps it will always remain that way. It could be that Nigeria just is not interested in our ideal of honest, efficient government. There are people in the world who accept rule by a corrupt few as inevitable. The British have tried to transplant an exotic flower in the land of despotic kings, nepotism and dash. The flower may well wither for lack of care.
* * *
Reading the morning newspapers in Lagos is always an amusing experience. One, for instance, features a column headed “DON’TS FOR LADIES,” from which the following nuggets were gleaned:
“When at socials, don’t try to be greedy, or make much puff when asked for a dance. This makes one a nuisance.”
“Avoid spitting in public, for it is a very bad habit.”
“When men come to propose love to you, don’t feel too big. Rather, try to be courteous and polite, whatever your answer may be—whether ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
News items are apt to startle the reader. One recent item, captioned “BURGLARS!” read as follows:
“The Acting Senior Superintendent of Police, Benin City, has issued the following warning to the Benin public:—
“Benin people, hearken to the voice of reasoning. It is understood that certain cliques and demagogues are arranging for burglars to burgle you houses.
“Mr. Oluwole, Acting Senior Superintendent of Police, now calls upon you in the interest of Benin that you should give informations about such people and their plans.
“You have been warned.”
In a recent issue, one paper carried a variation on the usual wedding notice. It seems that three people were joined together in matrimony—a Miss Johnson and a Miss Bida to a Mr. Sulaimon.
The paper reported that:
“The nuptial knots were tied by Alfa M. K. Ekemode of the Ansar-Ud-Deen Society. At the reception which followed, the toast of the brides and bridegroom was proposed by Mr. M. K. Jinadu.”
* * *
★
Read more:
Notes On Nigeria (I)
Notes On Nigeria (III)
Notes On Nigeria (IV)
