"Letter From Lagos."
This happened a couple of months ago but the memory will stay with me forever!
Recently I attended a lively meeting at my child's school here in Lagos. A number of parents had expressed concerns about events at school and the well-attended meeting had been called to air the issues with the head teacher and the School Board.
It started off much as any meeting, with parents standing up and making their complaints and the board giving an occasional interjection. Then one vociferous and articulate parent stood up to make his second point. The Chairman told the parent to sit down and listen to the Board instead. Well, as the saying goes, 'The Crowd Went Crazy!!!!!' En-masse, the Nigerian attendees rose to their feet and began shouting 'No! YOU listen to US!' and rushed the board, shouting, screaming, yelling, waving their arms around, poking, pushing and manhandling each other in true Jerry Springer style - all that was missing was the bouncers. I thought the woman behind me was going to expire from apopolexy whilst we expats sat demurely, with our mouths open in amazement; never have home country school board meetings been such fun!
After about 10/15mins and an apology from the Board, it calmed down. But by then the Chair had lost control and parent-power had taken over. The meeting went on for over two hours and on numerous occasions there were similar incidents as the Board said things that upset parents. Some of it was hilarious, such as when a parent requested that the floor listen to the Board. He began by saying he was 'A lawyer and when in court....' but got no further as a chant echoed round the room, "You're not in court now! You're not in court now!" until he sat down.
A little while later, a microphone was brought in, although to my mind, and ears, the decibles were already pretty high. This provoked a rugby-like scrum for possession, with admin staff members trying, but failing, to ensure fair play between parents and the Board. The mike was passed around between parents who, emboldened by the chance to make their demands at even higher volumes, came up with a seemingly never-ending compendium of complaints, some of which included a parent decrying the fact her son had never eaten as much chocolate in his life as he had since being at the school and another parent who felt her children were picking up Nigerian accents from the teachers!
Somehow, the mike was eventually wrestled from the parents and given to the Board for a reply, but it did not remain there for long. The floor preferred to hear from staff at the school and miraculously, by some sleight of hand, the mike reappeared in the hands of staff members. When the Board tried to move the discussion away from them, another chant went up, "Let the teachers speak, let the teachers speak!" until they did indeed get the chance to contribute their interesting views to the...ahem...discussion. The meeting eventually came to a standstill with sweating combatants having done battle and successfully raised the temperature by several degrees in more ways than one.
This school board meeting, Lagos-style, will be one of my abiding memories of Nigeria - the day the parents were more badly behaved than their children!