The president and value reorientation

I am one of those persons who believe that our best as a nation is yet to come and that we need to be alert to the bugle that calls us to greatness.

As the president rightly observed in his Independence anniversary speech, we need to get our act right, especially since we have been truly blessed as a nation with human and natural resources, which clearly keeps us ahead of other nations. As I have always opined in this column, there are too many self-inflicted issues that got us where we are and have kept us from reaching for the skies.

As soon as Mr President began to close his Independence speech and dwelt largely on national value re-orientation, good conduct, orderliness, et cetera, I began to clap sitting alone in my room and cheering loudly. It is clear to anyone who has lived in Nigeria, and for some of us who feel like foreigners whenever we ask that people are more orderly in their conduct, that the president has hit an important nerve without which we diminish completely as a nation. As I observed in a special piece in ThisDay newspaper when the president hit one hundred days in office, “It would be auspicious for him to look the direction of service delivery, work ethics, national values and all those things that made us wholesome as some of us were growing up in this nation destined to be great…A great economy is not really a great economy if people exhibit indiscipline, disorderliness, poor national ethos and disrespect for one another. Together we can build a strong nation. We pray for that time when people are up and doing and orderliness is respected and we are kind to one another. Selah!”

To succeed in value re-orientation we must all accept that we have fallen short of decent orderly behaviour and this has ultimately affected our economy, our creative industry, our health sector, the public service, customer service and security.

Here are samples:
If you wait at an airport for several hours and the airline does not even have the decency to tell you your flight is delayed not to talk of a cancellation, how does that airline grow? How would you do your business if you are late? If that airline is a monopoly, how do you get yourself out of the vicious circle? People who come to do business in Nigeria have come to the conclusion that there is no customer service here and Nigeria is a jungle. Not a good image.

In most service areas, my people act as if they are doing you a favour when in other parts of the world it’s the other way round. People understand that business is tough and they will do anything to retain your patronage, including giving you a drink at the reception or even giving you an oven-baked biscuit (warm by the way) when you are waiting at a hotel reception. This is expected to give you customer pleasure. But here, the receptionist in some cases is having a discussion with his colleague and ignoring a customer.
Only yesterday at a supermarket, a sales staff was rude and disrespectful to a foreign customer, nearly accusing him and his wife of theft when the man’s four-year-old was only trying on a pair of shoes he liked. I was scandalised. Her voice was raised, her hand on her waist like a wrestler. I had to intervene. Owners of businesses do not train their staff and yet make huge profits from all of us while their staff deliver poor customer service.

Is there any reason why a decent man/woman jumps traffic lights and then plasters a silly smile on their faces when you eyeball them? Someone could have died.
We are in a hurry, permanently in a rush, always jumping queues as if it were a disease. The person you found on the queue is not an idiot, please join the queue at the end of it where you rightly belong.

Is there a reason why a file that should otherwise be produced is dragging or has disappeared in the normal run of duty because someone feels that they need to be encouraged to do their jobs? These are some of our major problems, Mr President, in addition to “begging” which has become a national shame. Begging at airports, at security points, at supermarkets, at office gates, everywhere until the shame consumes me and leaves me stuttering.

We thank Mr President for that part of his speech. My prayers as always are that we all accept that until we do our bit in our various spaces, Nigeria cannot move forward. Happy belated 55th Independence anniversary to all of us.

Eugenia Abu