How I get stagnant queues to move in Nigeria
A few days ago, I came to a place with a friend to get some documents processed. When I arrived there, I saw that there was already a long queue there and it wasn’t moving.
The officials were loitering about on the other end of the queue and ignoring the people standing in the queue.
Someone in the queue told me they have been standing there for a long time and the officials weren’t responding to them.
I immediately told my friend to hold my stuff while I do some Nigerian magic in the queue. I walked straight to the beginning of the queue and started and shouting at the officials on top of my voice.
“What is going on here?! Why aren’t people being attended to here? Are you telling me its 11 am and you guys are already closed for the day?
You there, what is the problem? Why isn’t anyone on the counter attending to the queue?!”.
As expected, ‘thing worked, about 4 of the officials started apologizing to me immediately. Two of them walked to the counter and started attending to customers, one of them asked me for my document immediately and started processing it.
Follow me on Medium: medium.com/@daveptn
One of the ladies that have been on the queue started shouting at the official attending to me “That’s unfair, he just came right now and you are already attending to him!”
I told the official, “don’t mind her, just continue what you are doing.”. Within 10 mins, he was done with me and moved unto the next person.
So I walked to the lady that was shouting,
ME: You were just shouting at me. Can I have a word with you about what just happened?
SHE: Yes, what you did is absolutely wrong. You just came to the queue that was here for the past one hour and you jumped to the front ahead of everybody and got your document processed.
This is how you people are spoiling Nigeria, gush, I hate this country!
ME: You guys have been stagnant here for the past 1 hour or so, I came immediately and made it work. Don’t I deserve a reward? Isn’t it fair that I claim my reward in some way?
SHE: Smiles. It’s kinda fair.
ME: As a patriotic Nigerian that you are, were you doing the country any good by humbling staying in that queue instead of protesting the nonchalance of the officials?
SHE: (Shakes her head while still smiling)
ME: You see? On my own part, I don’t play Nigerian, I am Nigerian.
Walks out like a boss! Leaving everyone in the queue amazed.
If you travel around a lot or deal with a lot of queues in Nigeria, eventually, you will learn that many times, officials don’t care about the queue and one of the best ways to make it work is to go to the front and apply a little high-pitched pressure.
It works all the time in Nigeria: banking halls, academic environments, government offices, and so on. Many queues in your life as a Nigerian will never move until you shout at the officials at the front.
Note that this is different from arrogantly jumping the queue and disrupting an ongoing process. There is actually a bill in the house of reps that is proposing 6 months jail term for people jumping the queue in public places but there is no bill to address nonchalant officials processing queues.
Follow me on Medium: medium.com/@daveptn
