Business Ethics in Nigeria
Since my last post, I attended a traditional wedding, visited the fabled “okada ward” in the National Orthopedic Igbobi Hospital and had to duck into a police station in Apapa district to distribute rice to poor residents of Lagos.
The wedding took place in Ikoyi and it was a very extravagant affair between two very established families. I wore my Buba Sokoto with the family’s cloth so the armed security personnel let me in with no problems. They had an indoor pool, a professional band and top shelf liquor. It was the first time I tasted Blue Label Scotch whisky.
Igbobi Hospital has a special unit for patients who suffered severe accidents. We were given remarkable access to Igbobi because my colleague’s aunt is a doctor there. There is a mystique around Igbobi in the minds of Lagosians because they think there is a ward specializing in “okada” (motorcycle taxi) victims and there are traditional Ijaw doctors in the courtyard breaking chicken legs and performing folk medicine procedures on patients.
In fact, there was no “okada ward” and no Ijaw doctors when I visited. The hospital was well maintained with several beds vacant and many of the accident victims were from car collisions as opposed to okadas.
The increase in the price of rice is being felt here in Nigeria. Recently President Umaru Yar’Adua paid $80 billion Naira (USD $680MM) for an emergency supply of rice from Thailand and today there was an editorial in “The Guardian Newspaper” stating that the president should invest $10 billion Naira in ofada rice farms in Nigeria’s Ekiti State. Recent food riots in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Somalia and Haiti further demonstrate the gravity of these price increases. With the potential rice cartel in mainland Southeast Asia, more people will eat semovita, garri, ofada rice and yams in Nigeria.
Last Sunday, I volunteered for an organization called “A can, can make a difference.” This organization bags and distributes rice to the underprivileged in Lagos. After bagging rice alongside Nigerian and Togolese volunteers we boarded rattletrap vans and visited some of the poorer areas of Lagos. We went to the Lagos train station which is mostly in disuse, but there are trains to Kano in the north every month or so. Many people live in the train cars sitting along the tracks. With the price of petroleum in Nigeria at $70 Naira per liter (USD $2.25 per gallon), it is hard to keep train service afloat without significant government subsidies.
After we left the station, we drove to Apapa and started distributing rice by a highway overpass. More and more people started rushing to the van and tried climbing in, so we sped off with a man still clutching to the van. We ducked into a police station to take cover as people were still fighting outside. After things had calmed and we distributed the remaining food, the other van broke down and we couldn’t find a rope to tow it, so the driver decided to push the van with our van along the road until it got into gear.
The more time I spend here, the more I feel Nigeria is in the center of the action. Oil prices rose to a historic high of over $123 a barrel partly due to recent unrest in the Niger Delta following reactions to a leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) being sentenced to a closed trial in Nigeria after being captured trying to procure arms in Angola.
In terms of my project on business ethics, we have compiled a lot of data through our survey and are actively soliciting survey responses and case studies about Nigerian companies who have successfully implemented policies to deal with ethical issues. Please send them along if you have any examples.
Nigerian music is great and the hits in Lagos this summer are “Gonga-Aso” by 9ice, “Do me, I do you” by P-Square and “Lorile” by X-Project. Thanks for all your comments on the blog and stay tuned for my next post.