No one wrote with as much acuity and as much frustrated love for Nigeria as my brother-friend, the late Prof. Pius Adesanmi. His op-ed “The.
.. By Chika Unigwe No one wrote with as much acuity and as much frustrated love for Nigeria as my brother-friend, the late Prof.
Pius Adesanmi. His op-ed “The Parable of the Shower Head” captures the “manage-am-like-that” attitude of our people. In it, he talks about calling maintenance to check out the shower head in the room of his five-star hotel in Abuja.
The technician comes up in record time, takes a look at the problem and declares it a non-issue: that the shower head is functioning at all should be all that matters, not that it isn’t working like it ought to. Adesanmi makes the connection between that and the culture of mediocrity that has become so normalised that one could swear it is in our DNA. I was reminded of that article in the past week while I was in Nigeria.
Its fingerprints are everywhere, and when you complain, folks say it’s because you’ve come from abroad: “Ah, we in Naija, we are used to it.” Power cuts every five minutes, luxury hotel towels faded and raggedy, indolent and unenthusiastic staff who take half an hour to bring drinks from the restaurant to the room. In all matters big and small, most people seem resigned to managing am.
“Ah: We in Naija, we are used to it.” I don’t blame citizens who are forced to find ways of dealing with the stress it takes to survive our beloved country, .
