lies and betrayals.....

I hate dwelling on the negatives at a time like this in my life, despite my concious efforts to avoid it i find myslef helplessly drawn to these constant forces that succeed in irritating and annoying me, leaving me to eventually reduce myself to a lesser state of begrudgfull anger and resentment. Time and time again i have prayed to God that he helps me avoid people who cause me to do such things.



Unfortunately that prayer was not answered last week Monday. Not feeling too well on sunday night, i called one of my colleagues to tell her i might not come in to work on monday. Instead she stopped me in mid- sentence, telling me that the reported attempt to change our CDs had been successful, the good part was my colleague and alleged office friend (Flavor) who handled the whole change of CD process intentionally forgot to change her's. I thought we all agreed to forget about the letter and let it dissappear "ministry style", apparently she had grown chicken legs and out of fear of being discovered to not have submitted the letter had decided to submit it without the knowledge of the rest of us. It really felt like betrayal to me.



I found my way to the office first thing monday morning, as usual i was first in, sitting at my desk patiently waiting, planning my mode of attack. I say attack at this point because I interpretted this underhanded move by Flavor as an attack on not only me but on the rest of us corpers in the office. As i waited for who would first show up between Madam V and Flavor (both of whom i believed had conived to perpetuate this slight), I tried to think of the best way to unsettle them. The thing about me is i'm not a strategic type of fighter, i'm only good with first attacks, my follow ups tend to let me down hence my average record of equal numbers of victories and defeats (lol). Now here I was about to engage in a verbal duel with not one but two women who possessed high pitched nasal voices which they would try to use in drowning out what ever point i was trying to make.



Soon I had built up my first attack, which was bound to unsettle them no matter what, my problem as usual was my follow up attack....

you can call me petty but i wasn't going to be undone by two coniving women who had no reason to do what they did but to exercise a bit of what they percieved to be priviledged positions. I had already created a water proof excuse for refusing the CD change in case my proposed duel ended in my utter humiliation and defeat. I wasn't going to loose on two fronts no matter what.



As i sat alone in the Office that morning thinking about the best follow up strategy ever thought up by man, the answer walked right in; the new Corper, Steve who had barely spent more 3 weeks in the department walked in and that was when the idea hit me. Having prior knowledge of the coniving sisters intention to disposses him of his new desk and work station, I unashmedly started working on him, i riled him up, telling him of Madam V and Flavor's plan to take away his seat and install Flavor in his stead while sending him to share my system with me. I already knew there was nothing he could do about that but i made him see reason in not allowing them take away both his desk as well as his system since he was the one who made the effort to clear the space the previous week. This ploy was suitable enough for me considering how sure they had seemed that they would get both the desk and the system(now they were in for a suprise, thanks to my ginger)

When the two women were in the same room i seized the moment to begin my attack, i started by asking Madam V why no corper was consulted before our CD days were changed, she gave me the feeble excuse that the head of HR wasn't happy with the fact that no corper remained in the office on friday, * this was somewhat too late to rectify with respect to the old corpers, considering we had less than three months left to spend, but Steve, the new Corper was willing to change his since he was new. I chided her for not taking our respective schedules into consideration and went ahead to ask directly to put a stop to the whole process, she soon lost her composure, she started accusing me of being rude and antagonistic towards her, instead of replying her i changed focus to her accomplice. Flavor had been expecting me to do something like this so she just sat there quielty until I pointedly accused her of not changing only her CD day, by this time the deputy Director had come into the office and was asking what the argument was all about, when he heard most of the story, i felt i would get an unbiased listening ear, but madam V had her own plans. She went further with the story, claiming that it was a directive from the Director General himself. That undid it all for me, immediatley the deputy Director heard this, he began to chastize me; " I've never known you to be like this so stop confronting your superior, if you have a problem with the directive go to the proper office and lay your complaint rather than shouting at your superior". At this point i refused to give up so i continued with my plan, attacking Flavor, i claimed ; " but she was the one who submitted the letter and she intentionally refused to change her CD". This only sounded more like an attempt to save face rather than an attack, i was obviously loosing this fight.



The DD (deputy Director), looked to Flavor and asked her if my claim was true while Madam V raised her voice as i had anticipated and began to deny my allegation ; "how do you know that"? The DD simply looked to Flavor for confirmation. That was when the lie came out of her mouth; "my CD is not on friday any more sir". I fell silent and looked at her intensly, i clenched my fist tightly and looked at her but she averted my eyes easily because the DD was already addressing me, ;" don't make such false accusations anymore, now will you get back to work". I felt as if i had been shot straight in the head, right in front of a senior staff these two women decided to lie.



I had apparently lost this battle, so i only had my second plan left, which was all dependent on Steve, meanwhile i headed straight for the Human resources deparment. I explained myself there without skipping a beat with my story well thought of and laid out, luckily i was heard and cleared without much fuss. By the time i got back to the department my second plan was playing out, with Steve already giving both women a hard time already, i couldn't help myself upon seeing the exasperated expressions on the two of them's faces so much that i burst out laughing at a point and ran out of the office. The issue was finally settled with the removal of the Computer system from Steve's table. I knew things would never be the same again in the office and unknown to her the biggest loser in this case was Flavor (i doubt if she realizes this). My CD is still on friday and Flavor can barely look me in the eye anymore.......

As for the other two corpers, Steve already agreed for his to be changed while Princess seemed to be clueless about the whole thing, she was fine as long as the change didn't affect her yellowing skin or pretty face. We were all good. At the time of documentation of the CD day changes, Flavor's CD day still fell on friday.

Property Inspection???

There are a lot of people who believe that writers are depressed little people who sit in unlit rooms, suffering from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)and hardly have any form of social life. Well the truth is that a lot of us spend a lot of our lives in the open, mixing and socialising and if i could go a bit far, i'll say we're have the best receptive responses when it comes to experiences.



Well most of the time i've always found experience through my passive observation of things around me and this normally leads me to experence all sorts of emotions along with other people, truth is they might never know i feel this way, but i take in everything as a new experience; i am alive..

so waiting in line to buy fuel was annoying in a way but it gave me a new perspective on the things professional private drivers go through.

Part of the experiences i enjoy in Abuja for now is the fact that as a corper i'm required to spend a day out of the five working days of the week performing community development (CD), but seeing that most of the communities within the Abuja metropolis are government developed there isn't much else to do, especially as my own CD group is sanitation and hold on a friday, i cherish the lack of the need to pick up a broom or rake or what ever form of sanitation equipment/ tool. All i am required to do is pay the hush money which is adequatly named CD dues and make sure i show up every friday to answer present.

"Well that now is being threatened oh"... i just came across an outgoing mail to the director of NYSC asking him to change all the CD days of the corp members in my office. most annoying is that no one CD is to fall on a friday if this letter is acted upon. Well that is if it is acted upon, i mean even if they had still left someone's CD on a friday at least i would have had someone to resent for the next 4 months.

for now lets just say the letter is being "taken care of ministry style" (i'll expalin that to you later).

Meanwhile i had a busy day at the office yesterday, so as much as i wanted to post something new, i barely had time, i was turned into virtually everything an office staff was required to do, from fixing extension boxes to typing memos. The jobs kept coming in thick and fast and i could barely catch a break.

Then an interesting offer came in; one of my deputy directors and The the boss were going round abuja to inspect the properties owned by the property wing of the NNPC within the FCT. It was basically routine appraisals to confirm the conditions of the properties before proceeding ahead with sale or privatisation.
i jumped at the chance immediatly since i happened to be the only one in the office at this point in time (the rest of the corpers had vanished into thin air).

So out we went, 7 of us; The Boss, deputy Director, Senior enterprise officer in charge of NNPC properties, myself , two consultants to the properties and the driver....
We ended up heading for a six hecter land in Maraba first of all, this land had been enchroached upon by illegal builders who apparently had done more development in 5 years than the local area council could do in 25... they had built several houses and a handful of mini estates (i mean large face me i face you compounds) every where. This was obviously going to pose a problem if the land was to be sold. Meanwhile the consultants claimed to have been attacked by illegal builders the last time they had visited the property, immediately i heard this i became uncomfortable, not just because i had seen some hard worn faces on the way in to the place but because i feared that running in any direction would not do me any favours. My survival instincts kicked in the funniest way; my slight frame became enlarged in my mind because i had widened my hands by my sides and walked as if there were medium sized balls under my armpits, this i figured amplified the effects of my inflated chest which i had done by sucking in as much air as i could. i figure i could discourage a few aggressive attackers who believed in sizing up the opposition (though my somewhat childish face didn't do me much favours).

Each turn on the dirt paths we took had me braced for a rather directionless sprint, experience in hostile areas made me stare straight into the eyes of any onlooker we encountered but it just so happened most of the people i came across were either toddlers who were half naked or semi obese women who sat in front of their stalls selling small biscuits and soaps.. the stares i got back in return were either repraochful or curious ones. meanwhile the consultants who had raised my terror alert from green right up to red kept on repeating a paricular statment while failing to hide their apprehensions, they kept saying ;" in fact if you see the amount of people that came out to fight us ehn". it was around the 43rd time they mentioned it that i realized i wasn't the only one who was feeling insecure so i relaxed a bit knowing i wasn't the only one who was anticipating one form of ambush or the other. We spent about 45 mins on this particular property though by the 30th minute i was beginning to suspect my purpose for this trip.

We left Maraba and began our journey to another property closer to town and that made me more relaxed and tired after the animalisitic attempts at potraying an alfa male in, so i dosed off a bit on the way to the next property and started dreaming of gallops and dirt roads, it seemed as if that was the only way i could stay asleep since the route had a lot of bumps and port holes. from this point on we encountered no more problems that required me to utilize my alfa male dominance. I just relaxed and took in all i saw. i hope NNPC don't have more properties located in similar areas cause it seems the rest of my group didn't even notice anything i did.... since no one offered me lunch.