Mentality of mediocrity settling for the sub-standard

Last week I spent a few days in Lagos – after quite a long break from Nigeria. My husband, in-laws and I travelled out to Lagos on Thursday with a Nigerian airline and returned on Sunday. As far as trips go, this was the first family trip we took to Nigeria in a party of six. I am not sure if it was the safety in numbers that allowed us to freely and vocally criticise or the fact that we had been out of Nigeria long enough to see things from an outsider’s view in the first place – let’s just say the trip made for quite a disappointing and at times farcical experience.

Where to even begin? The service and the overall quality and cleanliness, all of a great standard only four or five years ago had drastically declined.

Then came a chain of small but significant mini catastrophes that made travelling ‘cattle class’ even more inhumane than possible. First, my sister-in-law spotted the tea splashes on her tray table, presumably not cleaned since the last passenger, however many passengers ago, then my niece saw the sick in the already used sick bag disposed in the seat pocket.

A few minutes into the flight, when we discovered, instead of the five-year old movies normally paraded as ‘latest releases’, there was no in-flight entertainment due to a “technical fault” we were not even a little surprised. When my sister-in-law asked the flight attendant if it would be fixed anytime soon, the vague answer and apologetic tone made it clear that the system would not be fixed during our flight – nor anytime soon.

Then came the toilet in the economy class which was out of order on the way to Lagos, and remained so on the way back to London four days later, which then led us to wonder just how long it had been lying dormant. To make matters worse, en route Lagos, the second toilet, which had been steadily flooding, had to be shut down too leaving some 200 passengers to share two toilets.

Return flight was yet another farce – from broken seats to broken trolleys fixed with sellotape, dangerously teetering on the edge of careering down the isle in full speed doors flapping about. As I sat there my iPad on my lap with pre-downloaded, self-tailored in-flight entertainment, bracing my pea-sized bladder for the six-hour flight with limited toilet access and watching the broken seat in front of us swing back and forth at random, I had two separate and yet connected thoughts:

First, if an airline cannot be trusted to look after the trivial, how can they be trusted to look after the crucial, more importantly so, look after our lives?

Secondly, isn’t it such a shame that for those who are not fortunate enough to travel out of the country, sub-standard is the norm – worse still, the aspiration?

When I aired some of these thoughts to a friend the other day, wondering out loud how I too, for a while at least, had accepted the sub-standard as standard, and how many others had no choice but to accept it as such. How can you lead a life where you know what is standard is theoretically within reach but in practice you are failed by the “We go manage em” attitude of the majority and more importantly those who have the power to change the status quo?

My friend who had spent most of her life in Lagos and higher education years in the UK and the US – not batting an eyelid – reeled everything else which should never become the norm: sub-standard lives, sub-standard relationships, sub-standard marriages. We concluded that in Nigeria where day-to-day living is all about the survival of the fittest – or savviest, if I may add- most get used to the “manage it” attitude. We end up “managing” situations: “managing” sub-standard planes who may be putting our lives at risk, “managing” a stressful life which puts our wellbeing at risk, “managing” sub-standard marriages or pretentious relationships because rejecting them will upset the status quo of “managing”. Perhaps, she mused, the reason Nigeria still functions against all odds, is because we are so used to “managing”.

“Plus,” she added, “If you don’t manage em, who are you complaining to? Will anyone listen, more importantly, will anything be done about your complaint?”

This took me to a few days before; truthfully, had I made a complaint about the blocked toilet or the broken seat or the out of order in-flight entertainment, would anything have been done? Based on my previous experiences with the same airline, which includes an unscheduled 4-hour layover where passengers were left on board to cook in their own sweat with no AC and no refreshments provided and no explanations made, the answer is no. The best you would have got is a sympathetic yet powerless flight attendant shaking their head with a feigned, “Eyah, sorry.”

Sadly, last week, as a family of six, we vowed we would never risk our lives or wellbeing flying on an airline which made us wonder just how badly “managed” crucial procedures were if minor niggles were not dealt with. Fortunately, we had a choice.

What about others who do not? What about those who have to accept or be contended with sub-standard service, sub-standard goods and sub-standard relationships? Perhaps it is about time, as the new generation of Nigerians and those of us honorary Nigerians, we take a stand and demand standard to become the norm, not the exception; and if not the case, for complaints to be heard and addressed. Wouldn’t that make the survival of the fittest and the savviest a tad little more survivable?