It Shouldn't be Rocket Science

Everyone likes a freebie or most of the people I know do.  I like discounts; I always get a feeling of satisfaction when I go to a sale and get stuff at ‘half price’; I proudly show off the item and ask “Do you know what the original price was?” and of course my audience (usually someone who likes a bargain too) will ask eagerly “What was it?” and I would reveal the price, with a certain level of pride in my voice, as if I had just revealed the secret to World Peace.

Businesses, retailers and service providers all over the world offer their customers freebies, discounts, incentives, coupons etc as an overt ‘reward’ for their patronage or a covert way of increasing sales and it usually works out well for both parties. However there are certain discounts and promotions that I’d rather not have, in fact just listening to or reading the adverts wears me out mentally! If I pay for a service, I have it at the back of my mind that I’m paying for convenience, so having to do a series of mental contortions to understand an unsolicited reward should not be part of the bargain. That is why I absolutely dislike GSM promos... I just don’t get them. Every time I listen to a GSM promotional advert on radio, I have this niggling worry that I may be a bit slow on the uptake, and for me that is not a good feeling.

If someone is going to give me something, especially something I didn’t ask for, they should keep it simple and free of ambiguity. But not so for all the GSM operators; there is an endless round of unintelligible promotion going on and I’m left wondering if these promos are made deliberately complex in order to put people off taking advantage of them altogether.  Then the service providers can justifiably say to themselves “At least we offered, it’s not our fault if our customers don’t understand our promos, the important thing is we offered”  

A common thread that runs through the promos are offers of exceptionally low call tariffs, just when one starts getting excited, you hear the dreaded ‘on-net calls only', so to enjoy those call rates, I have to scroll through my phone book looking for contacts on the same network! Then we get into the murky waters of disparate tariffs during a single call, the 1^st minute has a separate tariff from the next 5 minutes and then from the next 10 minutes and on and on it goes. To appreciate the value of this incentive, one must be adept at mental arithmetic... or have a pocket calculator handy after each call.

I recently listened to an advert from one of the GSM operators on radio, this promo aims at increasing the  BlackBerry customer base on a particular network. To this end, existing customers are encouraged to ‘introduce’ new users to the network and are in turn rewarded with free extensions on their own data plans and this is where my understanding of that particular promo ends. The rest of the advert is gibberish as far as I am concerned and the list of terms and conditions to qualify for the extension reminded me of the small print one might find on an insurance policy. I just translated the whole advert to mean “If you think we are going to give you an extended Blackberry data plan for nothing, think again!”

In view of the poor service generally provided by all the GSM operators, I wish I could be offered the following simple incentive at full price:

“Dial any number on any network and get through immediately at no extra charge; we will deliver your text messages without undue delay and instant messages will be delivered instantly rather than ten minutes later. We will not charge you for incomplete or aborted calls. If you have to call our service centre, we will put you through to someone who can actually render service and resolve your complaints in the shortest possible time. We will not hide behind computer glitches to overcharge you and our tariff regimes will not require a degree in rocket science for you to understand”

My final word to all the GSM operators in Nigeria, please keep it simple.

PS: To anyone who reads this, I’d like to receive comments about the various GSM promos; tell me what you think so that I can decide if I need to engage in brain training exercises or not.

All our guests bring us happiness...

There is a plaque hanging on the door of a reception room at a friend’s home; the inscription on the plaque reads “all our guests bring us happiness, some by coming and others by leaving” The irony was not lost on me and I’m sure that if you think about this statement, you too may have had guests who brought you immense happiness by waving goodbye.

There is a certain guest whose visits have brought everything but happiness for the general populace of her host destinations.  The last time she visited Lagos State, there was a 5 hour traffic gridlock in the Central Business District and I happen to have the ‘good fortune’ of working in that vicinity.

 On the day of the said visit, each time I looked out of the window from my vantage point (my office is on the 9^th floor) I wondered what could have happened to cause such traffic; my overactive imagination conjured all sorts of scenarios - “could it be an accident involving multiple vehicles, a large stationary vehicle blocking major access routes or even a large scale armed robbery?” I was soon informed that a ‘VIP’ was visiting but I still felt a visit from anybody was not enough reason for the absolute halt in vehicular movement. I reasoned that something else must have happened.  After all, the ‘VIP’ is not omnipresent and thus could only be in one place at a time so why would all the link bridges to the mainland be affected by her movement? As the day progressed, I did not find or hear of any other logical reason and anyway, people were already venting their frustrations about ‘THE VISIT’ on the radio.

So the explanation was the visit, why did this person visit...surely the visit must have been for the good of all concerned (including the stranded commuters), this visitor must have come bearing gifts and glad tidings; this kind of discomfort and loss of man hours must be offset by something positive at least. Unfortunately, the visit did not bring any good to Lagos State because it was a ‘thank you’ courtesy call on all the ‘South South’ (not the Lagosians) women who had been kind enough to put the visitor’s hubby into the highest office in the land. I know that saying ‘thank you’ is a courtesy that most of us were taught when we were tiny tots but this is taking things much too far!

The very thought of someone getting on a plane with a large entourage and shutting down the commercial capital of the country during the most productive hours of the day just to say ‘thank you’ for electoral votes is just too absurd.  In any case, a courtesy call should be innocuous and cause as little upheaval as possible but not so for the Dame’s visit; according to Kunle Fadipe in the Punch, she literally prevented the husbands of those whom she had come to thank from going about their legitimate business during her visit. If that is the price I have to pay for the Dame's politeness, please give me rudeness any day of the week!

Now, one would think Patience would restrain herself from such enthusiastic displays of ‘courtesy’ after the Lagos fiasco but no such luck.  The Dame found her way to Warri on Monday; this time she was inaugurating a beauty shop no less!  The visit was supposed to be ‘private’ but it had a very public effect because the security personnel shut down the town so that Patience could inaugurate a beauty shop in peace.  If she had gone to inaugurate a state of the art hospital or a school or any public building that might eventually bring some happiness to her hosts, maybe in our usual sentimental manner, she could be forgiven, but a beauty salon??  A salon that would probably be priced beyond the reach of an average Warri citizen.

I can only conclude that Dame Patience is a guest of the latter kind; a guest who brings you sheer joy just by standing up and picking up her purse...in readiness to leave. 

From the Greatest Book in the World

Mrs. Job

He is blameless

A man of integrity

A man respected by all

So why has he lost all?

I loved him, I truly did

Some may wonder at this love

That lasted only as long

as he had the world at his feet

When we lost the donkeys

I wasn’t worried

Then the sheep...

Not enough reason to weep

Then the camels....

I thought “all is not well”

Then the children

Swept away by a mighty wind

Now I am really crushed

But what does my husband do?

Afflicted, bereaved, in pain

He worships!

He still worships God?!

“Curse God and die!”

I screamed at him

I was his wife

But I forgot to be a wife

I forgot that wife means helper

I forgot that wife means encourager

In my pain and loss

I forgot to be a wife

I am Mrs. Job...

Impunity is a Nigerian

Im·pu·ni·ty  

n. pl. im·pu·ni·ties

Exemption from punishment, penalty, or harm (The Free Dictionary)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this word recently, in fact, it springs to mind every single day now.  Any time I pick up a newspaper, that word is splashed all over the pages albeit thinly veiled as news about the latest happenings in the country. Whenever I drive around, that word jumps at me every time I have to stamp on my brakes suddenly to avoid being hit by a ‘danfo’ or  ‘okada’ or just the next fellow in that flashy car who feels he is the ‘king of the road’! It gets my heart racing in fear when I am suddenly faced by a motorist driving against the flow of traffic for no other reason than the fact that s/he can and will get away with it. The word screeches from the sirens of ‘VIPs’ of dubious means and character. It honks from the mindless use of horns that distract rather than alert. Impunity stalks me, mocks me and thumbs its nose at me; it says to me “what are you going to do with all your outrage, huh? It needles me asking “do you think anyone really cares?”

That word whines every time I watch one of the endlessly televised senate/house probes (it is rather ironic that something or someone is always being probed in a nation that lacks probity).

Take the latest embodiment of impunity in our country, those faux jihadists cum nihilists who strut around detonating bombs and shooting people randomly. I am always mystified by the fact that they are described as ‘faceless’...these people grant interviews (they even complain stridently about being misrepresented by the media); they walk into TV studios; they are veritable publicity hogs and yet they are faceless!

Then what about the fuel subsidy cheats?  Apparently it is legal to receive payments that you are not entitled to in this Country of mine because they are not going to be prosecuted. That word again!

I also think of the numerous high profile arrests made by our dear EFCC, arrests that never end in conviction. Lawyers are quick to point to the fact that a judge can only convict based on the evidence set before him and I totally agree. However the lackadaisical and laissez faire approach to the prosecution of serious crimes just buttresses our culture of IMPUNITY!!!  That is the only reason a foreign prosecution service would spend 6 years building up a case when our prosecutors couldn’t be bothered. It is because, in that country, crime and punishment go hand in hand.

It seems to me that you literally have to leave the shores of our beloved Fatherland (or is it Motherland?) to be punished for breaking the law. And even then, some people are not happy about this, they complain that foreign punishment is rather ‘malicious’.

Whilst pondering this phenomenon, this unfortunate aspect of all things Nigerian, it suddenly occurred to me that if impunity could take on humanity, it would definitely be Nigerian.