Enviable workers of Akwa Ibom?

 

BY PRISCILLA CHRISTOPHER

For the past many decades, Nigerian government has recorded and experienced poor attitude to work from both public and private corporations. The Government on its part has no doubt done a lot to revive a vibrant working culture among her team but all has been to no avail. 

There has also been a widespread interest in improving the level of poor attitude to work in corporations ranging from the economic benefits to the preparation of workers for unprecedented demands of modern workplaces. There have also been social benefits tied to improving performance and access for large number of workers to get post-organizational learning. The role of workers has therefore been to lay the foundation for good outputs and if a good foundation is laid, there are likely to be improvement at other levels.
However, this cannot be boldly expressed of the Nigerian workforce; particularly those of our dear state.

Though commendable, Akwa Ibom State workforce can best be described as more of the relationship between a nagging wife and her husband, rather than that of a servant to his master. Complaints, grudges, disagreements, distrusts and other negative features have often characterised our workforce which most times though, have led to the implementation of better plans that would not have been achieved on a servant-master relationship platform.

However, this does not take away the fact that Akwa Ibom workers have not been impressive in terms of their attitude towards work. Without any reservation, our workers commitment, dedication and diligence to their work is far from being fair; more or less being classified as satisfactory. A typical government worker resumes his/her working day at 11am but signs 8:30am on the timebook. The entire working day is then characterised by gossips, story-telling and rumour mongering about what one may term irrelevant and incontributive to their work. Once engrossed in their group discussion, most public servants become oblivious of any visitor, client or customer coming in for one transaction or the other. The fellow is simply ignored and sometimes, turned into a stature while they continue in their giggling and scornful laughter. After this session, they suddenly become aware of a stranger’s presence and with no courtesy at all, they begin an unauthorised interview in a bid to intimidate or confuse the person. Worse is when they know a little of the visitor’s white-elephant mission, they make the scene so awful that one sent on an errand would not want to oblige such if sent again.

The attitude with which these workers come to work in itself is unthinkable. A lot of them carry faces that spell doom from afar such that any intending client would have a rethink on how to go about whatever intention he/she came with. Perhaps the government should really pay attention to this particular attitude of her workers. Arrogance, pride and ego have so eaten deep into the fabrics of senior Civil Servants that a first comer would not want to be a part of such ill. And if there were to be other viable options, many junior workers would not accept the subjugation, suppression and ill-treatment they get from their superior workers who only receive the praise of their (junior workers) hard work and go about their personal business with ease.

The fact that many senior workers in the Civil Service play the boss with their juniors is a norm in many public corporations. They go to work later than their juniors, assign duties they should handle and close earlier than others yet; they take delight in marginalizing, discriminating, querying and disciplining the birds who lay the golden eggs. While some go as far as slashing into two their subordinates’ remuneration, others take delight in withholding promotion when due, refusing leave applications and all sorts of unfair practices.

Lackadaisical attitude to work is also a common phenomenon among government workers. In many corridors, backyards, verandas and open offices of the Civil Service, you find people or groups clustered together, discussing during work time. Those who cannot stand the traditional office setting go the extra mile of sitting out at the Canteen, Staff Children School, Car Parks and other places where they can have a breathe of fresh air. On a second thought, one may wonder if the lack of what to do is responsible for this misdemeanour. Is it possible that some workers are just there for nothing? But earning salaries at the close of the month? Whether or not this is true, it is completely wrong and worth questioning.

Our workers, especially those in the Civil Service have in great measures shown zero exemplary strides as it pertains to secrecy and disclosure of confidential information. Many a times, information considered as ‘highly confidential’ have been divulged to members of the public who care to know especially as it pertains to delayed payment of salaries. It is not strange to hear a worker say “we have not been paid so don’t expect us to work”. By so doing, they put theirselves at the mercy of their clients who readily give them “a token” for the furtherance of their cause as non-compliance could thwart their mission. Teachers are the highest perpetrators of this. They let students know at will how bad the government has treated them and how much they are being owed. The next step they take is going on self-declared holidays at the expense of our future leaders. But do they tell these students about the benefits they enjoy from the government? NO is definite the answer. Are they not tarnishing the image of the government by doing this?

It is important to note that our attitude could keep and send us off our work places hence; workers should embrace the Golden Rule which states that for everything we desire from people, we should do same to them. Negative workplace attitude should also be controlled because they are highly contagious and can affect everyone thus, reducing overall productivity and damaging morale. A person with a negative attitude has the same power to influence others as a person with a positive attitude does. Those idling about should also remember that they are thousands out there looking for an opportunity like theirs; an opportunity to be a state or Federal government worker, and therefore, pursue diligence in all their doings.

Most importantly, workers should know that their dedication and hard work is the brain behind the government’s revenue and that only their continuous manpower contribution will lead the state and country to the next level.