Lagos Bosses, Vacations and Unpaid Salaries

A friend of mine told me the story of a dispatch rider who, along with his co-workers, had his salary withheld for weeks because his boss, sole signatory to the company account, was away on holiday. Similar tales of horror abound in Lagos. Just ask the employees of the many small and medium-scale businesses scattered around this merciless city.

Stories of this nature frighten me a lot more than I care to admit. Not because I am afraid that I will be in such a circumstance, but because they point at something even more disturbing: the lack of empathy and humanity that is the chief defining characteristic of the multitude of godless business owners in Nigeria.

I do not know what Nigerian labour laws say about paying staff salaries promptly (and I really don’t care), but I am quite sure that the unwritten laws of humane conduct mandate that a worker who has done his bit be paid his wages as at when due. It is not irrational then to expect that any right-thinking employer with his heart set on a vacation abroad would facilitate the payment of the salaries of persons in his employ long before he sets foot on an airplane. There’s too much suffering in Lagos for anyone to work hard and not be paid on time because some insensitive boss just couldn’t be bothered to sign a cheque. That is intolerable cruelty, an addition of painful insult to the daily injury of living averagely in Lagos.

Have you not heard that workers endure some of the worst hardships in the world here? From terrible living conditions (have you seen the backside of Lagos Island?) to uncomfortable forms of public transportation (try getting a seat on a BRT bus at rush hour, would you?), the life of the Nigerian worker is a hard one, and the life of the Lagos worker is a harder one still. Plus (more subtractive than anything else), a large number of these workers have daunting responsibilities to take care of people other than themselves just because that’s the way the Nigerian society is (un)structured. Some have a horde of hungry mouths agape in a distant village, all waiting with collectively bated breath to be fed off meagre salaries. Others have sick family members whose faint hope of wellness depends on the paychecks of their benevolent relatives. Is it fair to make people so heavily burdened wait for what is rightfully theirs without just cause?

Have a little fear of God, or at least the fear of retribution. Vacations, cruises and ocean surf can wait, living cannot be put on hold.

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