allAfrica.com: Nigeria [column]: Potentially Failed Enterprises

allAfrica.com: Nigeria [column]: Potentially Failed Enterprises

Potentially Failed Enterprises

Daily Champion (Lagos)
COLUMN
July 11, 2005
Posted to the web July 11, 2005

By Tunji Adegboyega
Lagos

This column was not published two weeks ago, not necessarily because I intended to be off, but essentially because some people were not as interested in doing their job as I was in doing mine. And I promised last week that I would tell you what really happened. There is so much inefficiency even in the so-called private sector.

What happened was that I set out for the cyber café where I have been doing the job since about the beginning of this year, in the hope of writing the column and returning to my house in the next two hours or so. But I got a raw deal that I did not bargain for. Really, the cyber café in question is not the closest to my house, but it offers a unique service.

As a matter of fact, I was doing the job somewhere along Old Ota road until sometime last year when they had some problems in that place necessitating my change over to the new place.

As with many cyber cafe's in Lagos, the place (the old Ota Road cyber café) used to be a beehive of activities apparently because of its conspicuous location. Many students used to swarm there ostensibly to browse and do some other things that really should not be their concern for now. The cyber café, I understood, belongs to a member of one of the old Pentecostal churches whose members generally give the impression that this world is really not their home and that it is only a transit place that they are just passing through (apologies to Jim Reeves). There are posters on the corners of the cyber café warning against porno sites. Surprisingly, and to my chagrin, I once got some of the people working there on porn sites.

What baffled me was that even when it was obvious to the ladies (or were they girls? Anyway, they were somewhere in-between), that I was watching them, they could not care less. They just carried on as if to say, 'well, if you are interested, come on board!'

Yet, here were girls who buried their ears under the scarves on their heads, covering their hair plated with black nylon thread, a characteristic of SU members that ordinarily would have made one take them for saints from above.

I had always had reservations about the possibility of the place surviving even long before this incident.

One thing I observed was that there was no love among the workers. I picked interest in one of them who is fairly elderly and mature and subsequently began to give her my column to set whenever I could not go to the office to do it. And, quite honestly, what made me develop interest in her was the fact that right from my first day in the place, she distinguished herself from the rest. I told them that I did not have the time to wait and set the material and that I would therefore appreciate if it could be done for me by one of them. While the others pretended as if they did not hear what I said, this lady took the material from me and told me to come back later. By the time I returned, she had done the job. All I had to do was to read through and effect corrections and send the material. Even though she did not charge me anything extra, I handsomely rewarded her, to make a point to the others

This was how we started the purely official deal. Over time, she became an object of envy by the others and whenever I got there and she was not around, none of them would want to accept the material from me, giving one lame excuse or the other. Why I concluded that the place would soon die was not because the workers (SU members for that matter) sometimes sneaked to the porn site, after all there are many cyber cafés in Lagos where porno is allowed and some of them are thriving.

It is much a question of attitude of the employees. Today, when I pass through the place, it is a shadow of its former self about this time last year. It is still open for business, though, but it now operates as a business centre. Those who patronised the place then would pity the owner seeing its current prostrate state. Sometimes, I feel guilty that I did not make my observations known to the owner early enough.

Back to my 'newfound' cyber café that (I am afraid) is threading this same path to destruction. The attraction there, to me, is that it offers 'executive service' which attracted N150 per hour until about three weeks ago (against N70 in the 'popular side'.

The air conditioning system in the 'executive section' is also very effective. I thought that was a fair enough price for the comfort. I do cerebral work there and therefore cannot afford to be in the 'popular side' where as many as three students could be breathing over one's neck while sharing one computer system. Within two hours, other things being equal, I am usually through. I stay longer occasionally sometimes because, as we all know, things may not be equal all the time.

We were having a chummy relationship, at least until Saturday, June 25, 2005. That day, I spent more than four hours at the cyber café. Actually, that was the day Nigeria edged out Holland 10 - 9 in the sudden death penalties during the just-concluded World Youth Championship. The computer had been giving some minor problems even before the tension-soaked match began.

Somehow, I was getting the attention of the engineer then. But when the match began, I bought more time to enable me conclude my mission. They sold ticket to me.

By now, the corridor to the 'popular side' was jam-packed with soccer fans, effectively blocking the way to the engineer's office. At this point, I needed attention and went to the girl who sold the ticket to me. She asked me to get in touch with the engineer. My complaint that it was her responsibility to get the engineer for me, since she took the money for the transaction from me, fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, my time was running even though I was not working on the computer. Efforts to log out failed as the system refused to take instructions. In fact, this was what annoyed me most. Remember too that that match almost lasted till eternity. At a point, I had to scream and it seemed that worked.

Although I did not realise that this worked until after the match, when the manager came into the 'executive section' and I complained to him about what I had been going through in the past two or so hours.

It was then he said that they had switched off the Server at a point when they discovered that someone was on the porn site! I reminded him that he should realise that I come there often and I usually sit in a conspicuous place where it is not possible to be on porn site without being noticed. Somehow, he apologised and it is that that made me mellow about what I am writing today.

But then, it would not be proper for me to be completely silent on it, especially so after reading Akin Taiwo and Olakunle Abimbola's experiences in the 'New age' newspapers last week. Honestly, owners of small businesses need to wake up and be ready to monitor their investments if such are not to become potentially failed enterprises due to the activities of some incorrigible staff who do not care a hoot since they always collect their salaries at the end of the month. It is the owner that loses whenever anything goes wrong with a business.