When I took my first driving lesson (with my younger sister) in Enugu, our driving school teacher’s car was a mess. One of the passenger doors couldn’t close properly, you had to hold on to it, one of the windows was covered with a tarpaulin but it moved so he ‘managed’ it like that. When he wasn’t teaching young people like us (we’d saved up our pocket money and were taking lessons without our parents’ knowledge), he was a taxi driver. And yes, he used the same car. Managing it with all of its crazy defaults when really, it should have been off the road, the death trap that it was.
However, managing is very much embedded in Naija culture. Some years ago, my brother and friend, the late Pius Adesanmi, gave a brilliant keynote (later published in the Premium Times) in which he told an anecdote about being in some high-end Lagos hotel where the shower head was broken. “In all that luxury and mimicry of First World standards, I turned on the shower and hot water gushed out of only about four or five holes in the shower head. Remember that a shower head has hundreds of holes and it is the combined gushing, pulsating power of all the holes that provides the rounded shower experience. I called Reception and complained. Profuse apologies laced with sir, sir, sir, and a promise to send the engineer (plumber, but they said engineer) up to my room right away.”
“The plumber eventually arrives and doesn’t understand the fuss about one shower head not working. Water could come out, enough for a shower, so what was the problem? Why couldn’t the prof. manage it? There was even a bucket in the shower so if he wanted more than a trickle, he could fill the bucket and pour the water over himself all at once. When Adesanmi has the same issue in Ghana, the technician understands why it is problematic and fixes it. Adesanmi concludes that, “The Nigerian technician comes from a different world. One sordid and shitty world of rationalising mediocrity, created by 160 million people and the useless political leaders who rule over them.
“Every time you accept less than perfect, justify it, impose it on people around you, you are killing Nigeria softly and unpatriotically.”
I thought of that article last week when news broke of the young doctor who died when the elevator she was in crashed from the 10th floor of Lagos Island General Hospital, Odan. She was two weeks away from completing her residency. She was going down to the ground floor to pick up the food she ordered. Nigeria killed her. We – for all the ways we have accepted/justified mediocrity – contributed to her death. The government, the body in charge of the doctors’ quarters and all the powers that should have made sure the elevator was working well killed her.
Like many things that eventually break down completely, that elevator didn’t just begin having issues the moment she stepped in it. Per her fellow doctors, the elevator had been breaking down slowly, giving signs that something was wrong. There were times, one said, it stopped working with people inside. For three years, they complained and got empty promises. Then necessity – as it is wont to in Naija- forced them to find inventive ways to manage it, as if it were some temperamental relative needing “management” rather than maintenance. No more than two people at a time; closing the door manually and so on.
Equally heartbreaking was the news that Dr Diaso didn’t die immediately from the impact of the crash either. According to a witness, she kept saying she didn’t want to die. After she was extricated from the scene, she needed blood but the hospital had no blood.
Her colleagues are rightfully asking for justice for her. The Lagos State governor has begun by sacking facility managers and has suspended LASIAMA GM over the incident. One part of me wants to shout “eye service’ because we are good at that too. Whatever the case is, it shouldn’t take a death for elevators in government-run buildings to be fixed. And don’t even get me started on a government hospital lacking access to blood for the young woman when she needed it most to stay alive. Shame. Shame on us all for our acceptance of our nonsense patch-patch culture.
Solutions? One immediate solution is to get justice for the dead young woman. Everyone concerned should lose their jobs and depending on culpability, spend some time in jail. Once people begin paying for mismanagement, we will begin to see a change. I agree with the former Minster of Aviation, Osita Chidoka that “We need a regulatory framework for lifts in Nigeria. The regulation should be state-based under a federal law that specifies standards, maintenance, licensing, and certification of lifts.”
Finally, a long-term solution would be re-education. We must be rewired to reject the culture of ‘management.’ To say “No, we no go manage am,” to things that ought to work better.
May Vwaere Diaso’s soul rest in peace.
