Incompetence Is Expensive

I was added to the WhatsApp group of my set. We had graduated since 2008 and parted ways, but a popular student among us died prematurely two years ago, and another student reached out to some of us concerning the funeral.

This led to the creation of the WhatsApp group.

What do old classmates talk about in a WhatsApp group?

We discussed the contribution of money to the family of the deceased.

Some former classmates with a beef with each other continued it.

Some, with love interests in each other while we were in school, tried to awaken it.

In my opinion, it was a terrible idea.

One should learn to let sleeping dogs lie. We had graduated for many years, and we had all redefined and changed tremendously.

Some of us had struck gold, and others were still struggling to master life as it was.

Why add extra pressure to impress on top of all that?

One of our popular lecturers was celebrating his birthday on Facebook.

One of us saw it and posted his image on the group chat.

Some of us immediately took exception to it.

"Why are you posting this man's picture? He is not a good man. He demanded that I must fuel his car just because I asked him for some marks so that I could move from F to E in HCM 311," wrote a male member of the group

Another person said, "He demanded that I must sleep with him before he would give me an extra ten marks to move me from Grade E to Grade D when I took his course in 300 Level."

Stories began to fly in the group.

The ladies claimed he demanded sex from them, and when they didn't give him, he failed them.

Some said they slept with him, and he gave them the extra marks.

At the end of the day, the group admin was forced to delete the lecturer's image.

I found this funny.

Some of us who were natural A students couldn't relate. The man never asked me for a dime before in my life, and he never asked the ladies in my circle for sex before either.

No lecturer whose class I ever took regretted being my teacher

I never had to darken the door of any of them for a favour.

The obvious truth was that these folks were very unserious when we were in school. They would come to class when they wanted, treated their academics with levity, preferred to party and joke around all session, but when they wrote tests and exams and failed, they felt they could beg their way to success.

They laid their beds but were determined not to lie on them.

They ate their cakes, but they also wanted to have them.

None of us in the WhatsApp group was bold enough to tell them this because the one who dared to do so would immediately be labelled as self-righteous, a know-it-all, and given a bad name.

You don't need to make enemies at this stage in life.

So I did the honourable thing and exited the group.

I had always considered it a bad idea in the first place.

The same principle applies to many people at work in Nigeria today.

Incompetence is expensive.

A lady got a job but found herself unable to handle the role because she did not know what to do.

She wanted to keep the job because she needed a source of livelihood, but her lack of competence was evident, and she might have to lose the job for this purpose.

In order to survive, she befriended the team lead, the MD, or her supervisor or manager, and began to offer sexual favours in exchange for her lack of competence. The manager hands off her tasks to another competent staff member to handle while she collects a free salary for sleeping with the boss.

A male staff member becomes the office spy because of a lack of competence. He knows he could not deliver on the job, but elects to serve as the office informant for his boss in order to keep his job.

When such staff members narrate their ordeals, they paint their bosses as wicked, demanding, tasking, evil, and draconian.

They expect to keep their jobs for free, even though they have no business being employed in the first place.

Those who are proficient at their jobs do not get to do anything extra unless they want to.

They resume at their desks, execute their tasks, rack up laurels, and close as when due.

They climb the ladder of success on merit, with a proven and undeniable track record of success.

The incompetent want this too.

They want to be promoted, they want to have the big titles and drive the big cars, and bask in the accolades of success that the competent ones enjoy, even though they have not earned it.

They resort to all sorts of underhanded and extracurricular activities like sleeping with the boss, bribing the boss, prayer and fasting, blackmailing, pleading and begging the boss, appealing to the emotion, and so on, just to get on a list where they naturally don't belong.

"They promoted everybody, but they have not promoted me in ten years."

"They are even telling me that I am on the list of those they want to sack due to redundancy."

No company throws out its competent hands. If at all the competent hand gets sacked for other reasons like discipline or arrogance and so on, he or she gets snapped up quickly by another firm or starts his or her own thing without missing a beat

In some cases, a competent hand will retire or resign, and the company would beg or offer a better contract just to keep him or her on their payroll.

When you hear people complaining of "he wants to sleep with me" or "She is asking me to do this and that for her" as a member of the staff of a company, just know that competence is lacking somewhere.

A lady asked a question during our Blissful Home Q and A session regarding her husband and his relationship with a fellow staff member.

She said the person is a single mother of one, and her husband was differing to her to the point of neglecting her and her son to do favours for this woman sometimes.

She did not allege that he was having any sexual activity with this woman, but she was uncomfortable with their closeness.

Her husband told her the woman was helping him with his work.

They work in the same office, and the man was running errands for this woman because the woman was covering up for him at work due to an issue of incompetence.

He is not the first, and he will not be the last. Incompetence leads to compromises, and the compromises then give anyone who cuts the incompetent person some slack a bad name.

It is always best for a lecturer to stick to his guns and insist on meritocracy alone.

If you compromise your stance for some students by collecting a bribe from them or assisting them to cut corners, you get labelled as the bad person at the end of the day.

The same applies to bosses in the place of work. There is nothing wrong in taking someone under your wings, but if the person is not deserving of that opportunity but you extend it to the person all the same in exchange for sexual favours or any other favour, you have given yourself a very bad name in the long run

When you hear stories of lecturers demanding sex from students or demanding money from students before giving them marks. You feel appalled at the idea, and you accuse the lecturer of corruption and indiscipline.

Never once would you imagine the enormous pressure mounted on lecturers by students and their parents for the success of their children, and the compromise some lecturers have to make under duress.

Being competent saves you from a lot of unhealthy realities that others who are not so competent have to deal with in the name of building their career.

So many people don't know this basic truth, and this is why they remain in one spot for a long time.

-GSW-I was added to the WhatsApp group of my set. We had graduated since 2008 and parted ways, but a popular student among us died prematurely two years ago, and another student reached out to some of us concerning the funeral.

This led to the creation of the WhatsApp group.

What do old classmates talk about in a WhatsApp group?

We discussed the contribution of money to the family of the deceased.

Some former classmates with a beef with each other continued it.

Some, with love interests in each other while we were in school, tried to awaken it.

In my opinion, it was a terrible idea.

One should learn to let sleeping dogs lie. We had graduated for many years, and we had all redefined and changed tremendously.

Some of us had struck gold, and others were still struggling to master life as it was.

Why add extra pressure to impress on top of all that?

One of our popular lecturers was celebrating his birthday on Facebook.

One of us saw it and posted his image on the group chat.

Some of us immediately took exception to it.

"Why are you posting this man's picture? He is not a good man. He demanded that I must fuel his car just because I asked him for some marks so that I could move from F to E in HCM 311," wrote a male member of the group

Another person said, "He demanded that I must sleep with him before he would give me an extra ten marks to move me from Grade E to Grade D when I took his course in 300 Level."

Stories began to fly in the group.

The ladies claimed he demanded sex from them, and when they didn't give him, he failed them.

Some said they slept with him, and he gave them the extra marks.

At the end of the day, the group admin was forced to delete the lecturer's image.

I found this funny.

Some of us who were natural A students couldn't relate. The man never asked me for a dime before in my life, and he never asked the ladies in my circle for sex before either.

No lecturer whose class I ever took regretted being my teacher

I never had to darken the door of any of them for a favour.

The obvious truth was that these folks were very unserious when we were in school. They would come to class when they wanted, treated their academics with levity, preferred to party and joke around all session, but when they wrote tests and exams and failed, they felt they could beg their way to success.

They laid their beds but were determined not to lie on it.

They ate their cakes, but they also wanted to have them.

None of us in the WhatsApp group was bold enough to tell them this because the one who dared to do so would immediately be labelled as self-righteous, a know-it-all, and given a bad name.

You don't need to make enemies at this stage in life.

So I did the honourable thing and exited the group.

I had always considered it a bad idea in the first place.

The same principle applies to many people at work in Nigeria today.

Incompetence is expensive.

A lady got a job but found herself unable to handle the role because she did not know what to do.

She wanted to keep the job because she needed a source of livelihood, but her lack of competence was evident, and she might have to lose the job for this purpose.

In order to survive, she befriended the team lead, the MD, or her supervisor or manager, and began to offer sexual favours in exchange for her lack of competence. The manager hands off her tasks to another competent staff member to handle while she collects a free salary for sleeping with the boss.

A male staff member becomes the office spy because of a lack of competence. He knows he could not deliver on the job, but elects to serve as the office informant for his boss in order to keep his job.

When such staff members narrate their ordeals, they paint their bosses as wicked, demanding, tasking, evil, and draconian.

They expect to keep their jobs for free, even though they have no business being employed in the first place.

Those who are proficient at their jobs do not get to do anything extra unless they want to.

They resume at their desks, execute their tasks, rack up laurels, and close as when due.

They climb the ladder of success on merit, with a proven and undeniable track record of success.

The incompetent want this too.

They want to be promoted, they want to have the big titles and drive the big cars, and bask in the accolades of success that the competent ones enjoy, even though they have not earned it.

They resort to all sorts of underhanded and extracurricular activities like sleeping with the boss, bribing the boss, prayer and fasting, blackmailing, pleading and begging the boss, appealing to the emotion, and so on, just to get on a list where they naturally don't belong.

"They promoted everybody, but they have not promoted me in ten years."

"They are even telling me that I am on the list of those they want to sack due to redundancy."

No company throws out its competent hands. If at all the competent hand gets sacked for other reasons like discipline or arrogance and so on, he or she gets snapped up quickly by another firm or starts his or her own thing without missing a beat

In some cases, a competent hand will retire or resign, and the company would beg or offer a better contract just to keep him or her on their payroll.

When you hear people complaining of "he wants to sleep with me" or "She is asking me to do this and that for her" as a member of the staff of a company, just know that competence is lacking somewhere.

A lady asked a question during our Blissful Home Q and A session regarding her husband and his relationship with a fellow staff member.

She said the person is a single mother of one, and her husband was differing to her to the point of neglecting her and her son to do favours for this woman sometimes.

She did not allege that he was having any sexual activity with this woman, but she was uncomfortable with their closeness.

Her husband told her the woman was helping him with his work.

They work in the same office, and the man was running errands for this woman because the woman was covering up for him at work due to an issue of incompetence.

He is not the first, and he will not be the last. Incompetence leads to compromises, and the compromises then give anyone who cuts the incompetent person some slack a bad name.

It is always best for a lecturer to stick to his guns and insist on meritocracy alone.

If you compromise your stance for some students by collecting a bribe from them or assisting them to cut corners, you get labelled as the bad person at the end of the day.

The same applies to bosses in the place of work. There is nothing wrong in taking someone under your wings, but if the person is not deserving of that opportunity, but you extend it to the person all the same in exchange for sexual favours or any other favour, you have given yourself a very bad name in the long run.

When you hear stories of lecturers demanding sex from students or demanding money from students before giving them marks. You feel appalled at the idea, and you accuse the lecturer of corruption and indiscipline.

Never once would you imagine the enormous pressure mounted on lecturers by students and their parents for the success of their children, and the compromise some lecturers have to make under duress.

Being competent saves you from a lot of unhealthy realities that others who are not so competent have to deal with in the name of building their career.

So many people don't know this basic truth, and this is why they remain in one spot for a long time.

-GSW-