Corruption

I had a bit of a debate with my driver the other day. Right now we are experiencing a very long delay from the Nigerian Banking system. We are expecting a payment from one of our clients, a large multi-national, which is now three weeks late. My driver told me we should just find out who is in charge of our account and bribe them. Then we'll get our money without any problem. "That's the Nigerian Way" he told me.

So I spent the next ten minutes of the journey arguing why it is never a good thing to bribe, and that it just helps the rich in Nigeria get richer and the poor stay poor. I don't think I changed his opinion. I think he thinks on the lines that Everyone else is doing it so why not us?

Recently a neighbour of a friend of mine was arrested by EFCC for something called 'wash wash' which I believe is the coloquial term for the 'Black Money Scam'. It could be money laundering I suppose. My friend told me that this man was often seen talking on a mobile phone using a handkerchief to cover the microphone and using phony accents. People didn't really understand what he was doing but they suspected he was a 'yahoo boy'. I was impressed to hear that he was arrested, and thought that finally things might be on the right track. I have just learned that he is now back on the streets, having been 'bailed'.

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria, Corruption

Death in Lagos, Nigeria

This blogger 'beta' upgrade is irritating me. I don't know what Google are doing but everytime I log in I have to jump through all kinds of hoops just to get to the dashboard where I can post. I'm asked if I want to upgrade every time and saying no never works. Every time I have to go through the process of trying to upgrade my account only to be told that they can't upgrade it at the end. This is because my blog is not hosted on blogspot I think. Surely Google can work out that they can't upgrade me before pushing me to do it?

I'm looking forward to the upgrade, because there's some useful stuff there, but all this now is just making me mad.

So other than that, Up to yesterday, the guys have entered almost 10,000 forms. Pretty good going. My work on the verification procedure is still not finished, but we have verified about 1000 forms so far, 10% should give us some figures for the accuracy of each data entry clerk but because of the number of errors I'm seeing it looks like we'll need to check much more.

I've been trying to get a delivery of diesel for our generators this week, and it's proved very frustrating. We have a diesel guy that we prefer to use (he's nice enough to give us credit) and I've been trying to reach him since Friday but his Glo mobile phone wasn't going through. Not unusual in my experience, but still on Monday we couldn't get through so I sent one of our security staff to see if he can locate him. He came back to tell me that the diesel Man had gone to his village for a burial but would be back later today, and his people had promised that they would have diesel for us in the morning. So that evening I managed to call him to confirm and he told me that they would deliver in the morning. 3,000 litres of Diesel is a lot of money, more than ₦250,000 (~£1000). Obviously cheaper than the UK but we go through loads of it because the mains power (previously NEPA [Never Expect Power, Always] - Now PHCN [Problem Has Changed Name]) is still very very bad. People tell us it's getting better but it's not really reflected in our diesel yet bill so I doubt that.

So Tuesday I waited in before going to the project office until 2pm. After several phone calls to the guy where he was giving me an excuse that his 'Moto get Wahala' I decided I was wasting my time waiting and went over to the project office. That night I called the guy and learned that the reason for the 'Wahala' was because his 'Moto killed somebody'. Nah Wah Oh!

I don't know any more details of what happened, but when you see yourself in the chain of events that killed a human being it's really disturbing. I thought about it a lot and decided the only people to blame are the Power Companies who can't provide enough power to let us operate an office and a house. I don't know the details of what happened, perhaps the Driver was totally to blame, but he wouldn't have been on the road if I didn't need diesel. Death by Power-Cut in my opinion.

The diesel man came this morning and we got our diesel, lucky old us, eh?

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria, death, power cuts

Bonus Biscuit

Bonus Biscuit
Originally uploaded by ajbrowe.

proof positive that a lack of attention to detail is not universally detrimental. An Orange Cream Biscuit made in Nigeria by Nasco.

wish I could write like this.

In fact, I wish I could write 1/10th as well as this...

Buildings fall down, pensions aren't paid, politicians are murdered, riots are in the air ... and yet I love Nigeria

Don't miss out the comments.

This is an article by the author of Purple Hibiscus which I've mentioned before.

This story was once again stolen from Nkem Ifejika who's blog is one of my favourites.

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria

An august week in August

Over the past week we have managed to enter 2517 forms bringing the total entered to 3078. Not bad going considering this is the first full week of operating and we only had 5 staff for most of the week. We have taken on 3 new staff for data entry and we have started verification work on the entered forms to make sure things are entered accurately, so far I'm not that impressed but I hope that it's just basic errors because of nerves or unfamiliarity with the system, and that such problems will become less common soon.

I've repaired one computer at the office so I will call one new person for a trial / interview on Monday. After that I would like to call two staff from our client to join us, It would be good if they were perhaps working on verification rather than data entry. I think though that they will need some experience of Data Entry before moving on to verification because they will need to know their way around the data entry system very well before they can do it effectively.

Today is my fiancées birthday, so we'll be having a little party later.

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria

D end of D Weekend

I'm just back from dinner at Pat's bar and I'm sat at home alone because everyone else has travelled out of Lagos. Pat's was very quiet because of it being sunday

The MultiChoice DSTV system (Satellite TV system - Multi-No-Choice) expired today and I didn't have cash to go and renew it, I don't even think their office is open on Sundays. I like to catch up with Eastenders on Sunday as all 4 of the weeks episodes are shown at certain times throughout the day. I know it's a bit sad, but it gives me a little attachment to home that I quite like.

BBC prime, the channel that carries Eastenders here, fellow brits should try to imagine channel 4 and bbc one crossed and you'll get the idea of what it's like. The odd old BBC comedy mixed with Gardening and Home Decorating fluff, Bargain Hunt, Weekest Link and the odd detective drama you get the idea. Some Channel 4 programmes are in the mix as well which is a bit strange for me when I go home and I see Grand Designs (one of the more intelligent home decorating style programmes) on C4. As I understand it the Director General of the BBC used to work at channel 4 - nothing dodgy going on there then. Oh and don't get me started on the wierd South African Adverts on the channel. Top Gear just doesn't work with advert breaks.

So there we go. Enough of a rant. I see that I've had more comments demanding photos. Well, I may get the chance to visit Calabar this week. Nothing confirmed yet, but I'm quite excited about it. I am promised it is one of the most well maintained cities in Nigeria, and is very beautiful so I will hopefully have lots of photos.

I don't really have any other photos that are fit to post just yet, mostly boring work stuff, and other photos of people I don't have permission from to post their pictures, so sorry o. I will try to remember to get my camera out when going to the office tomorrow. There's something I'd like to take a picture of, but I may get into trouble with some hostile locals, have to wait and see I guess.

Today I got the results for my 3rd assignment for my M255 Open University course (Object Oriented Programming with Java). I got 98%. I lost 2 marks for not using the special Java variable this when writing the Java Class. Everything worked perfectly without it but because the course text says I should use it for clarity I lost out on another 100% score.

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria, open university

And onwards we go...

As of Wednesday 2nd of August, the Data Entry for phase 2 of our project has started.

After waiting a couple of weeks to hear back from some of our staff who worked with us before on the phase 1 data entry I managed to arrange a kick off date and get things moving.

Currently only three of the experienced staff have been able to come, others have other jobs or different circumstances so have been unable to come. Three is very good I suppose since it is over a year since we last did anything in phase 1.

Not only though do I have these three working helping me iron out the last few wrinkles in the new system. I have also been inundated with CV's for people interested in joining us so I don't need to worry about finding new blood so much. I feel bad that there will be some people I have to dissapoint. Still their CV's will stay with me in case of future work, which the way things are going could be good.

I hope to call another three or four people in for an interview/ trial starting Wednesday 9th. Then there are another three workstations that need a little TLC before I can find users for them, but I hope some staff from our Client can join us. Some insider info is always useful.

561 survey forms entered to date, ~22,500 to go.

Technorati Tags: Lagos, Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria, progress