LASTMA ON "STRIKE"

Sometime in the early 90s, I represented my mum at the Parents/Teachers Association (PTA) meeting at one of my brothers’ school. One of the parents at the meeting in talking about getting the school back on track said it was important that the standards of education not be allowed to decline. He said that if there is a serious problem with the infrastructure in the school, that could be built within a short time once the funds were available but if pupils/students are not given the right foundation or education, it may take much more than just funds to get things right. I have never forgotten that statement and I will come back to the statement later in the course of this write-up.

In 2004, the then governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu, who really achieved more for Lagos State than most people remember or are willing to give him credit for, established the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to ease the traffic bottlenecks in the State.

In spite of the fact that the Second Schedule to the Law under which LASTMA was established created some offences and listed the penalties therefor, I doubt that very many people would dispute the fact that LASTMA under Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu stuck to its mandate and indeed achieved the main objective of easing traffic bottlenecks in the State.

LASTMA continued in the direction under former governor Bola Tinubu in the first few years under the immediate past governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola. And indeed, it should be said that the procurement for LASTMA under the administration of former governor Fashola of several towing vehicles, helped in no small measure to quickly clear the road either after a breakdown or an accident.

Trouble started in my opinion however when the State under the immediate past governor decided that slamming heavy fines on errant drivers was the ultimate solution to traffic lawlessness. It is no secret that most LASTMA officials make a lot of money daily by entering into negotiations with apprehended drivers and diverting fractions of the official fines to their own pockets. The heavy fines set by the State government turned most LASTMA officials into the monsters they later became. I don’t know if the State government was making a lot of money from the fines imposed on errant drivers, but I know that a lot of LASTMA officials made a lot of money because the fines set were so high.

LASTMA went from being a genuine traffic management outfit to a body which had as its priority, revenue generation; both for the State and (as it appeared), more importantly for individual officials. The lust for money became so great that quite a number of LASTMA officials would in fact deliberately mislead drivers into entering one-way roads in the absence of conspicuous signs which should have done the job, and have their colleagues waiting ahead to make arrests. Where LASTMA officials should have been proactive in preventing the commission of traffic offences, they wait (and perhaps even pray) for you to make sometimes, honest mistakes and then swoop on you because it puts money in their pockets.

It can then be imagined, how majority of these extremely dirty LASTMA officials would feel when the new governor told them to stop harassing motorists. Perhaps there was a meeting, perhaps there was a directive. But what followed after the governor’s directive was an open defiance or rebellion by LASTMA officials who then decided to report at their duty posts, but to lift no finger (or leg) in traffic management.

LASTMA officials, at least a good number of them, stopped working. In Lagos State where commercial bus drivers have an infinite capacity for lawlessness, LASTMA officials stopped working. In Lagos State where the average private vehicle driver has a near infinite capacity for lawlessness, LASTMA officials stopped working. The result is what most Lagosians have been experiencing in the past several weeks. Traffic gridlocks for no discernible reason. And of course, with these gridlocks come robberies in traffic.


Governor Akinwunmi Ambode should respond by sanctioning a number of LASTMA top officials. The last I checked, the governor retains the power under the 2004 law which established LASTMA. He can remove any official however high-ranking who openly defies his directive. Under Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, LASTMA did not need to harass motorists to be effective. And majority of people in Lagos and other States acknowledged LASTMA’s effectiveness.

Back to my earlier story about the fixing of decayed infrastructure versus the fixing of damaged humans. It is my belief, rightly or wrongly, that over-emphasis on too heavy fines and criminalization of every little infraction under the Fashola government did substantial damage to the psyche of LASTMA officials and turned them into monsters. The heaviness of the fines and the fact that it took average of a whole day to get it paid, was an effective bargaining chip for LASTMA officials who thus enriched themselves immensely and illegally at the expense of both the State and the people.

Governor Ambode should insist on LASTMA, VIO & KAI not harassing people. And this insistence should in no way stop them from performing their duties. If this open defiance continues, the governor should make examples of a few top officials to keep the underlings in line. The State cannot long afford to waste such long debilitating hours in traffic.

AIRLINES, FLIGHT DELAYS AND PASSENGER COMPENSATIONS

It is often said that time is money. Indeed, this holds really true because time squandered can never be regained. Sometimes, persons who fail or neglect to keep appointments or be on time for an appointment may thereby miss opportunities of a lifetime. Sometimes, the missed opportunity might not be the fault of that person. It might in fact be the fault of some other third parties who do not think that considerations for their customers/clients should form part of the service they are supposed to render. Let’s go the route of the airlines on this one today.

Airlines usually require passengers to check in for flights booked at least 50 minutes before departure and oftentimes, we have heard stories of passengers missing their flights not necessarily because the plane had taken off before they got to the airport, but because they came in several minutes after they were supposed to have checked in. There have in fact been stories of a particular airline in Nigeria which allows itself to be so over-booked online that sometimes when you turn up at 1 pm for a flight that is supposed to depart at 1.40 pm, you will be told that you have arrived too late!

In such situations, the missed flight and having to make arrangements for another flight are the passenger’s punishments for “late coming”. While the passenger however gets some form of punishment for coming late or even sometimes with an over-booked flight, for not coming early enough, the situation is very different with the airlines when they, for whatever reasons, cancel or delay their flights. We understand that airlines can sometimes be forced by reasons beyond their control such as really bad weather conditions to delay their flights or even totally cancel such flights until further notice. However, even in such situations, airlines owe their customers, the passengers, the duty of promptly informing them of their proposed action and the reason(s) for such actions.

Where however, the reasons for delaying or cancelling a flight has nothing to do with, say, the weather condition, then, it is only fair that the airline compensates the passengers who had booked and paid for such a flight. Compensation should come not just in form of refunding the money already paid where necessary, it should also come in form of paying back more than the passengers paid in an attempt to mitigate whatever inconveniences the delay or cancellation might cause to them.

A responsible airline management, especially in climes where there the business is quite competitive will realise that offering some sort of compensations even without the existence of a law to compel them to do so, will keep the passengers returning to their airline. Of course it cannot be in the interest of any airline to make flight delays and cancellations a habit just because it provides some sort of compensations.

The Air Passengers Bill of Rights currently in the process of being passed in Nigeria while being a step in the right direction, has, in my view not yet adequately addressed the issue of compensation of passengers in the events of delays. For instance, the Bill is said to have provisions that passengers can demand for reimbursement of money paid where flights have been delayed for up to two hours or more. And where the delay is just an hour, the airline should make provisions for two free calls, emails and snacks for affected passengers. While admitting that this is better than nothing, it is nevertheless the case that some people cannot be adequately compensated in monetary terms for even a delay of one hour. It is therefore recommended that the provisions in the Bill should be more stringent and should make it mandatory for airlines to compensate passengers in cases of flights delayed for up to one hour or more and where cancelled, compensation should not just come in form of provision of accommodation and transport to and from the airport. The compensation should be much more than that. It could come in form of perhaps, a 30% discount and refund on the ticket already bought or the passengers’ future tickets. These measures will serve to keep the airlines on their toes and will definitely go a long way to reduce the frequency of flight delays and sometimes outright cancellations in many cases, with scant or non-existent regards for the convenience or situations of the passengers.

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Diamond Bank workers protest

Diamond Bank workers protest

THREE MEN IN BLACK?

I was doing a research for a matter on-line when I stumbled on the quote of Honore de Balzac below. I have decided to share the quote with everyone not because I agree with everything in it, I most certainly do not, but because it is nothing if not interesting. Some of the things in the quote are true, even in my short years of legal practice, I have seen quite a lot which always remind of the cliché that truth is always stranger than fiction. I have seen hitherto close siblings become bitter enemies because of their parents' inheritance, I have seen marriages break which had no business coming together in the first instance, I have seen people do things which make me wonder whether their brains were on sabbatical at the time of doing the deeds...

I do not agree with the author of the quote that priests, doctors and lawyers do not think well of the world, perhaps I am only speaking for myself in this wise, but I really haven't seen too much to make me agree with this part of the quote. While I agree that most priests and lawyers in most countries wear black robes, the only kind of doctors that my research tells me wear black robes are the academic doctors and not medical doctors that I think he means in his quote. I nevertheless think the quote is interesting enough to be shared with you.






There are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world, the priest, the doctor and the man of law. And they wear black robes, perhaps because they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of these is the lawyer. He sees the same evil feelings repeated again and again. Nothing can correct them. Our offices are sewers which can never be cleansed. I have known wills burned. I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives kill their husbands. I could not tell you all I have seen for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth.

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)

RAMBLINGS OF A PERSON CONFUSED

...that which we call a Rose by any other name will smell as sweet

- Juliet in ROMEO AND JULIET, William Shakespeare




Since the Western world determines most of the things in the civilized world as we know it, allow me to lay the blame for my present confusion at their doorsteps. It started by them either being confused themselves, or deliberately trying to be mischievous by getting the rest of us confused. You probably are wondering by now what I’m going on about.

Well, it’s not just one thing, it’s a whole lot of things; from the disparity in the spellings of certain words and the way they are pronounced, to the differences in the pronunciation of certain similarly spelled words, from the way certain words appear on paper, chalk boards, computer, name it, and the way the words are rolled on the tongue, to the name given to certain animals, plants etc.

Let me start with two words that have already appeared in this piece, pronounce and pronunciation. You will think that since the word pronunciation is a derivative of the word pronounce, it will be spelled pronounciation. But oh no, the English people in their wisdom decided that the spelling must be pronunciation though every other word related to the word pronounce is similarly spelled. For instance, pronounceable, pronouncedly, pronounced, pronouncing, pronouncer, pronouncement. So, why on earth is pronunciation different from the rest? Why the sacrifice of the letter “u”?

Other sources of confusion are the words know, knowledge, psychology, pseudonym, writ, write, wrung, wry, the list goes on. And you of course guessed right! In none of these words are the first letters pronounced! So, again, I wonder, of what use are these first letters if we are supposed to ignore them in their pronunciations? Would the meaning of psychology have changed if it had been spelled as sychology from the beginning? Of course the same question applies to every other word on the list.

Still on spellings and pronunciations, you would think since the words choose, chance, choice, charade, chain, chaff, chair, chalk etc are all pronounced as if you are pronouncing words beginning with the letters sh, or ch in other words you pronounce the word chandelier as if it is spelled shandelier, charade as sharaid, you will of course naturally think words like chameleon, chamelot, chaos, character, chiropractor, all also commencing with the letters ch as the earlier-listed words will also be pronounced with ch or sh but oh no! These words are pronounced with the letter k! This is why the word character is pronounced karaktar, chamelot as kamelot, chaos as kaos and chirocpractor as kairoprakto! As a junior secondary school student 1, I made this very innocent but I dare say, understandable mistake in pronouncing chaos not with the letter k but with the letters ch! It was quite an embarrassing episode as I had made the mistake while reading a passage from one of the recommended texts out in front of the whole class! And talking of class, if it is going to be pronounced klass, why deprive K its rightful place? Why let C take the glory while K does all the work? What criteria were used in the decision of how a particular word was going to be spelled? And how many people actually know that the word choir is supposed to be pronounced with an invisible w as in kwir? Or that the word which is actually supposed to be pronounced with an invisible k commencing it? If you didn’t know, all I will say is, it serves them right that you decided to pronounce these words as spelled!

Did you know that the colour pink used to be called white? You didn’t? Well, that makes the two of us because neither did I! More to the point, I still do not know that it was ever called any other name different from Pink. But I am guessing it makes sense that it must have once upon a time been called white if the English people refer to their skin colour as white when we all can see it is actually pink. Of course, there is also confusion in the label they gave to the other different human race that populate the universe. While they refer to their own skin colour as white(?!), they call the Asians yellow and the dark-hued Africans black! Before I start on this, I have to confess that I can be quite dumb when it comes to telling colours. But even as dumb as I can be, I have managed over the years to be able to tell the most popular of the colours apart. Having been able to do this, I find it confusing, if not downright dishonest that Caucasians refer to themselves as the white race and thus the colour of their skin as white. I know the colour white, it is one of the perhaps not so many colours that I can tell in my sleep and even while unconscious. I have also seen these people and while I may not be so great with colours, I do know that the closest colour to that of the skin of the Caucasian is pink. Why then have these people chosen to call the colour of their skin white? Was pink once called white and they somehow neglected to effect the necessary correction when it was swapped with white or did they choose white because of all the positive attributes associated with that colour?
They call my skin and those of other dark-skinned Africans black. Well, I am a very dark skinned person. But as dark as I am, the most accurate colour that describes my skin is a chocolate that has a very generous portion of cocoa. And I know unless my skin is mixed with other colours, no matter how dark it gets, it will never turn black. So, if the colour of the skin of people like me is brown, why did they decide we should be called blacks? Again, could it somehow be because being dark skinned, they feel our skin (and perhaps behavior) will be closer to black and its not-so-positive attributes?

The Asians are called yellow. The only thing I’ll say is that anyone who has ever seen an Asian will know that the colour of their skin is certainly not yellow, not at least if we are going by the shade of the colour we were brought up to call yellow.

When I was in my first year at the junior Secondary School level, I read a book titled THE MADNESS OF DIDI in which the Author whose name I do not recall, argued through the novel’s protagonist that if Caucasians knowing their skin colour is pink and not white insist on calling it white, then he was also at liberty to call his own skin colour green and not the black they chose to label it. The poor man was sent to the psychiatric ward on the ground that he must be off his senses to call his skin colour green!

Again, not done with either they themselves being confused or trying to confuse the rest of us, they decided to name a species of dolphin Killer Whale! If the mammal is a dolphin, why name it Killer Whale? Talk about giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it! And, talking of which, has anybody seen a hung dog? I don’t know how that phrase came about, but I hardly think anyone who decides to kill a dog will adopt hanging as the method of choice. What happened to just shooting the dog or poisoning it?

The above by no means represent all the ways the people in the Western world have either exhibited their own confusions or deliberately attempted to confuse the rest of us. Either way, I am convinced that I am not the only one confused!

Hey, did I remember to thank you for suffering my ramblings till the very end? Thank you!

MOCALITY CLOSES SHOP!

I think I first heard about mocality.com on the radio either early in 2012 or sometime in 2011, I’m not really not sure exactly when. What I do recall is that the advert of mocality that I heard on radio then cast it as a directory of sort for local businesses in every person’s locality. For instance, if memory serves me well, the first advert I heard about Mocality.com was about a lady who needed to buy good Ofada rice for her boss and who was directed by a friend to the website for the nearest place at which she could buy the rice.

That was before they came up with mocality deals. Mocality deals aroused my interest and I signed up to receive their daily deals directly to my mail and I have as a result bought a few products and services and got to meet new people and service providers. This is how the deals (from my corner as a consumer) work, the mocality team get some product sellers and or service providers to offer their products and or services at a reduced price for a particular period of time, may be a week, and consumers like me who are interested in any of the products or services click either to buy the product/service online or go to the office of mocality in Ikeja G.R.A. to pay for it and then collect a coupon which they take to the office or shop to get the product or service already paid for.

I don’t know how profitable this venture was for the mocality crew, but I do believe very strongly that while they were still on, they provided a very valuable service mostly for the Small businesses and enterprises which ordinarily have very little or no at all budget for advertisements. For instance, a consumer who purchased a deal on mocality.com and goes to redeem the coupon at a particular business outlet can thereby establishment a relationship with that outlet that goes way beyond just merely redeeming the coupon of the product/service purchased. The consumer can see other products of interest which he/she would buy quite apart from the deal already purchased.

When I got the text and email messages which informed me of Mocality’s intention to shut down on the 28th February 2013 and which invited me to redeem the coupon of any deal I might have purchased from them on or before 25th February 2013, my first reaction was; there goes yet another casualty of Nigeria’s horrible business environment. I nevertheless put a call through to one of their staff members and asked why they were closing down. The only response she gave me though was that it was management’s decision. In search of further insight into why the company was shutting down, I went online and read their blog, therein I learnt that the company was shutting down not only their Nigeria operations, but the Kenyan as well.

Deal Dey is still in place though to continue to give small businesses the much needed exposure, but I can't help thinking what happens now to all those that earned their living at mocality.

HYPERTENSION, NOT DRUGS

The report of the autopsy done on Goldie came out yesterday and the result was that she died of hypertensive heart disease which in turn triggered intracerebellar haemorrhage. (Hypertension seems to have shifted from something associated with the old to a condition which does not discriminate based on age). This is of course contrary to the rumours being widely circulated even before Goldie’ s body got cold that she died from doping or drug use.

While the news of Goldie being married came as a huge surprise and left me wondering whether my perception of her was at all right, I am at least happy to see that my firm belief that she wasn’t the kind to be hooked on drugs is given some sort of validation. Of course this doesn’t mean that her dying of hypertension will make her death less sad, but it does mean that she died with her dignity virtually in place.