COVID-19 AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(3)

WORK FROM HOME & VIRTUAL MEETINGS: I guess we are all familiar with the denouncement of office meetings by a sizable number of employees as a time waster and a hindrance to productivity at work. The social media is awash with memes on this. Beyond office meetings however, there are periodic meetings, seminars and conferences held by international organizations where participants have to fly in from different countries to attend. With this pandemic and the cancellation of flights plus the need for social (I prefer physical) distancing, we have seen the likes of International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN Security Council, United Nations Human Rights Council and the G20 Health Ministers among others, holding virtual/online meetings which are no less productive than the ones which were in the past, held physically. Companies have also been holding shareholders’ meetings and AGMs online.  

Before the pandemic and the lockdown imposed to curb its spread shut most people in the world inside, employees in many organizations had been advocating to be allowed to work from home, and to be fair, some organizations had started trying it out on a limited basis to see whether productivity would remain the same or even see some improvements. According to Harvard Business Report, roughly about 5% of the workers in the US and Europe were working from home before the lockdown. With Covid-19 and the lockdown imposed in many countries in the world however, many companies have had no choice but to allow many of their staff to work from home and the number of workers who will be allowed to work from home will likely increase significantly post-Covid-19, whenever that is, since it appears Covid-19 will stick around for some time to come.

In cities where commuters spend hours in traffic to and from work each day, more companies might need to take more critical looks at the probable benefits of having their staff work more frequently from home.

The downsides of working from home in a country like Nigeria will of course revolve more around the mirage that stable supply of electricity really is in most areas, and good internet access that will be required for the work to be comfortably done. However, a balance can be found between health and loss of productive man hours that are daily experienced in traffic versus the facilities that will be required for work to be effectively done from home. Many are already saying work from home (WFH) is the future of work. Twitter in fact, recently announced that its employees can work from home on a permanent basis and not just till the end is seen of Covid-19. But while WFH waits to fully take off in the nearest future, there is no doubt that with the persistence of the pandemic, especially with some countries experiencing a second wave of infections upon the ease of lockdown, more employers will have to content themselves with the work being done (and hopefully not harass employees with messages in a bid to monitor the work being done) as opposed to insistence on the workers’ daily physical presence at work.

 

NIGERIAN  GOVERNMENT & ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE: in the 5 days of partial lockdown in Lagos State before the Federal government imposed lockdown on Lagos, FCT and Ogun State, the Lagos State government had requested that members of the public refrain from going to the State Secretariat and any transaction needed to be done be carried out via telephone. The fact however is, precious few transactions with government offices can be carried out online. And over the phone, only the most basic of enquiries can mostly be made. I dare say, this is mostly true in other States of the federation as well as at the FCT.

Ensuring contact with members of the public has over the years and decades of Nigeria’s existence, mostly served the corrupt tendencies of government workers. If governments at all levels in the country should learn anything from this pandemic, definitely, one of the key lessons, and there are many, is the long overdue need, in the best interest of the government especially as regards revenue generation, to take as much of the governance as possible online. Phasing out physical interactions with government offices will not only substantially reduce corruption endemic in the civil service, the government will find its revenue generation greatly improved and expanded. This has become even more important with the pandemic drastically shrinking government’s income also from citizens’ inability to carry out normal business with the government. In the decision to put infrastructure in place for electronic governance, the government across all levels, have to put the economy and efficient service delivery at the forefront. Perhaps government would not be losing quite as much revenue as they presently are, if the government’s ease of doing business campaign had not been restricted almost, to only the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). While the measures quickly put in place by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) during the pandemic, for entrepreneurs to apply online for registration of products with it is commendable, much more still need to be done by other government agencies and departments both at State and local government levels across all sectors of the economy as much as practicable to enable citizens transact business with them online. Perhaps government would not be losing so much revenue if some form of electronic governance had been in place. As things stand, governments will continue to lose revenue on a massive scale until the economy fully reopens.

FEW THOUGHTS ON DASUKI

I have two confessions that I want those who read this post to know before going on to read the rest of the article.

My first confession is that though I am a legal practitioner, this post is not meant to be any deep legal critique of Sambo Dasuki's on-going travails at the hands of the Federal government of Nigeria. It is merely a casual observation of what is going on in the country and what it could possibly portend for the future of this country.

My second confession is perhaps more serious than the first one and it is that I did not really have the time to go through most of the newspaper reports on the Sambo Dasuki case before writing this post. Yeah, I know, I know, but there it is...

Having read my confessions, you are at liberty to stop reading at this point. If however you decide to venture further into this write-up and you have a violent disagreement with my observations, drink a cup of cool water and remind yourself that you were warned.

For those who may not know who Sambo Dasuki is, he was the National Security Adviser under the immediate past administration of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Sambo Dasuki was recently arraigned by the Federal government of Nigeria for illegal possession of firearms and money laundering. The presiding judge exercised his discretion and granted him bail on self-recognition at the time of the arraignment. However, ruling on Dasuki's application to travel out of the country for three weeks for medical reasons, the judge decided to vary his bail conditions by directing that he get a surety on certain terms and conditions.

The judge went on to rule in favour of granting Dasuki's application to travel out of the country for medical check-up. The Department of State Security (DSS) however seem to disagree with the judge's ruling since on the heels of the judge's directive that Dasuki's passport should be returned to him and he should be allowed to travel as requested, DSS officials relocated part of their office to Dasuki's neighbourhood and effectively put him under some form of house arrest.

The DSS claimed in justification of their seeming disobedience of the Court Order, that Dasuki had been invited to answer some questions before a panel on some other charges and he had refused or failed to honour the invitation. In their opinion, since the charges because of which they decided to set up camp around Dasuki's house did not relate to the ones already in Court, they were not flouting any Court Order.

It would be recalled that before Dasuki was arrested and arraigned on the illegal possession of firearms charge, there was also some sort of siege on his house by the DSS.

One of the complaints some people including yours truly, had against the immediate past government at the centre in Nigeria was the level of impunity and the geometric, if not astronomic rate at which it was growing. It is my opinion then that this government has to be extremely careful about the actions of its agencies and the messages those actions send both to those of us casual(?!) observers and to the global community.

First off, I'm not sure what information Dasuki put before the judge which prompted the judge to exercise his discretion in favour of allowing Dasuki to travel out of the country. For instance, is the medical reason so grave that Dasuki cannot receive adequate attention/treatment in any of the hospitals in the country?

It will also be important to know what information the prosecutors who opposed Dasuki's application to be allowed to travel out of the country put before the Court which the judge apparently did not consider weighty enough to warrant a refusal of Dasuki's prayer/request. It would for instance be pertinent whether the prosecution informed the Court that Dasuki is a flight risk especially considering the fact that he may already be aware of weightier charges coming against him.

The above questions are important because those of us who do not have all the information may make the mistake of condemning the judge while not realising that perhaps the fault in a Court's decision may lie with the prosecution. It is fairly common knowledge that prosecutions of high profile cases in this country are largely compromised at both the investigative level and in their actual prosecution in Court. This is not to completely absolve some judges of misdeeds however.

Assuming that in spite of whatever relevant and important information that the prosecution might have put before the Court, the Court nevertheless wrongly ruled in favour of Dasuki's travel abroad, I believe that the DSS, having conducted their investigations and gathered sufficient evidence against Dasuki should just have gone ahead to arrest him on the new charges. The siege tactic first employed by the NDLEA against Buruji Kashamu and now employed repeatedly by the DSS in which not just Dasuki, but other people in his neighbourhood are terrorised is in my opinion, not the best way to go.

This government has to let its agencies imbibe the culture of doing things the right way. If we make exceptions for particular persons perhaps because of the supposed gravity of the offence committed by those persons, we might in future have the problem of the exceptions being used for the wrong reasons against innocent people.

The DSS should stop the siege tactic and make arrests where they have sufficient information and evidence to prefer charges against those who violate the Law. Where government and its agencies give the impression that they can determine when the rule of law should prevail, we may all have to pay dearly for it.