Timekeeping

Why does it make me so angry when people don’t keep to time? When workshops overrun by up to three hours? When something actually commences several hours after the publicised start time? And why doesn’t it bother Nigerians? Why does it not even bother those who have turned up on time, that they are hanging around for ages, waiting for others to arrive so the meeting can start, and wasting time that could have been spent on other things?

It seems to me that punctuality, in Nigerian culture, has nothing to do with respect. For me, with my cultural background, keeping people waiting, arriving late and not starting at the time I said I would are all acts of rudeness and disrespect for those I am keeping waiting. For me, it’s the equivalent of saying “What I have to do is more important than anything you might have sacrificed to be here.”.

But here, where people are far more laid back, where no-one ever expected things to start on time, where there’s nothing really pressing waiting to be done (because if there was, you wouldn’t have left it in the first place) – no-one really cares if things keep to time. And in the case of some workshops, the only reason people turned up in the first place was to get their per diems, so it doesn’t really matter whether the activities start on time.

It also seems that, when the prompt close of a workshop session – even that on a Friday afternoon – depends on there being no lengthy discussion on the final points, my Nigerian colleagues still prefer to make their points and finish the discussion rather than finish on time. So throw out that idea of the Nigerian work ethic being lazy, or people being focused more on their own needs rather than achieving their work goals: these people prefer to get the job done right rather than get home on time.