Thank yous and parting thoughts

My departure from Abuja is but a few hours away. Looking back at the past three weeks, I realize that my remarkable experiences in this town wouldn’t have been possible without the active support of many people.

Firstly, my wife Akila and the kids, who made do without me around. I owe you, big time.

My employer, IBM is a leader in corporate philanthropy and encourages IBMers to participate in programs such as the Corporate Service Corps (CSC) and the Smarter Cities Challenge (SCC), both of which I took advantage of. My manager Brian whole-heartedly supported my eagerness to participate.

My amazing SCC team members made the three weeks fun, and I learned from each of them.

 

Divine - boy, does she loves white rice!

Divine, a quiet presence during our heated discussions, acted as the voice of calm and reason many a times when our patience would run out and tempers would rise. On more than one occasion, she played the peacemaker. She establishes an amazing connection with people in a short order. I am glad that I was able to help her on her Abuja Hash trek up to Asokoro – and I expect many more hiking stories from her. 

 

The ultra-competitive Marvin

Marvin’s cool exterior hides a fiercely competitive spirit, evidenced by his swim challenge with the instructors at the pool. He took his time opening up, but once he gets going, he’s a hoot. As an African-American, his trip to Nigeria held special meaning to him, and his farewell speech rings in my head.

 Maria - did someone say "wine" ? 

 

Maria’s conscientious, meticulous preparation and initiative kept the team moving. Her fitness mania kept me on my toes. She’s a fun team mate and an adventurous person. Her love of spicy food was an eye opener. To get her animated, just get her some good wine. 

 

Sameh loves nothing more than chilling with a hookah and talking politics

Sameh, though the youngest of the lot, has a quiet dignity of manner and gravity of thought that set him apart. As a multi-talented musician, he jammed with the piano players at hotel lobbies and drummed with the wedding musicians. His ultra-liberal word-view combined with his loquaciousness resulted in several memorable chats on global politics. His conversations with Uber drivers revealed a lot about his ability to connect with people.

 

Remi - Real-life Energizer bunny

Remi, the Corporate Citizenship manager for IBM West Africa, was critical to the success of the team. Her passion for the project and her energy levels were intimidating. To all observers, it was evident that she believed she was doing more than a job – she was helping Nigeria rise up to its potential.

Ann - always helpful, always cheerful

Ann, the Country Manager for Pyxera, was a quite presence in the background – she kept everything going smoothly. The notable lack of unpleasant surprises during our stay shows how well she did her job. The Pyxera team in the US, particularly Kotheid and Rachel, arranged our travel and prepped us during the pre-work flawlessly.

 Dapper dude Israel 

Israel was by our side everyday – an aide who provided local knowledge and color in our interactions with Abuja and Abujans. His stylish outfits were a visual treat, too. 

 Nasiru -  natural-born hiker

Nasiru drove us around cheerfully, and on our Abuja Hash hike, led us back to civilization.

John and Judith

 

 Allison

Allison, John and Judith, from the Permanent Secretary’s office, were tremendously helpful in all or our dealings with the FCTA.

IBM Nigeria, particularly Judy, who pretty much acted as our local liaison and Dipo, the Country Manager, deserve my deep gratitude. 

The IBM Corporate Citizenship team in charge of the Smarter Cities Challenge program, Celia and Anne, make this program work. They are primarily responsible for us being here.

My blogging career will go back to hibernation after this is posted. What I learned from my previous stint blogging was that while I enjoyed the act of writing, the pleasure of looking back and reliving my experiences were an unexpected bonus. I have no doubt that I will come back to relive my experiences in Abuja through this blog. 

To those of you who followed me along on this blog, thank you.

The final stretch - Week 3

The final week! We’re scheduled to present to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Hon. Muhammad Musa Bello, on Thursday afternoon – we have a lot to do, and we’re running out of time. We ramp up our effort level several notches. Monday morning, we make progress in refining our recommendations and our storyline. Since we are presenting to a federal minister, we take pains to rein in the natural tendency to describe a lot of the detail behind our thinking and keep things as brief as possible. We make huge strides to getting to a crisply-summarized slide deck of about a dozen pages. Late in the morning, Sam’s colleague Ramy, from IBM Middle East and Africa drops by for a quick visit. We head out to dinner at the Dunes Restaurant – good Lebanese fare and great wine.

Remi’s back in town on Tuesday and she’s got some big updates. The meeting with the minister has been moved ahead to Wednesday – so there goes a day of preparation! In addition to the meeting with the Minister, there’s a session on Thursday with the heads of all the Departments and their leadership team. All day, we work at a frenzied pace – and the summary presentation gets more and more polished and emerges late in the day ready for prime time. We are confident about our recommendations to improve FCTA revenue performance – it was built up from a rigorous on-the-ground understanding of the issues and validated quite extensively. The recommendations cover FCTA organizational culture, technology infrastructure, process improvement, policy reform and other strategic initiatives. We bolster our recommendations with success stories of other city and regional governments that have implemented programs similar to what we were recommending. Everyone’s exhausted, so we order in some Indian food from Wakkis.

Wednesday – D-day is nigh! We start work early. We have a talk with Remi and a call with Celia to clarify the team’s role and to ensure that we act within the strict bounds of conduct required of IBM’s corporate philanthropy efforts. We rehearse our message delivery. By noon, the team is showing hints of our nerves and a small flare-up results – fortunately, it is settled quickly. Finally, it is time to head out to meet the Minister. We are close to his office when a call comes, informing us that he has been called away on urgent business – and that our meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow. We had been cautioned that this was a possibility, given the Minister’s position and responsibilities – so we head back with a mix of relief (at getting the additional time to prep better) and disappointment. We spend a fair bit of time rehearsing our sections and readying responses to questions we anticipated the audience might ask us.

Ready for showtime

Thursday, and we have another early start. We do final-final edits, ready back-up material and head out to the presentation venue. There’s some last-minute drama – several of the department heads have been called to meet with the Minister, so we need to delay the start of our session by an hour. While the audience was trooping in, we had pictures of our work and play time in Abuja up on a screen. Finally, it is time to start – and we take our seats. I lead off the presentation, expressing the team’s gratitude for the reception we received at each of the departments we visited, and the level of professionalism and preparedness that the FCTA employees displayed. I present our findings and recommendations, and Marvin takes over to present the roadmap and recommended next steps. Sam MC’s the Q&A session, and Divine and Maria respond to the audience questions. We finish in an hour, and are satisfied with the way the session went. Lunch is provided for the participants, and the caterers had thoughtfully provided take-away boxes for those observing Ramadan fasting.

On to the Minister’s office. We set up at his conference room and at 2 PM promptly, he walks in. All of the department heads are in attendance as well. From IBM, Remi, Dipo the Country Manager, Judy from Government Relations and Ramy from the Dubai office accompany us. We introduce ourselves to the minister, and Maria kick-offs the presentation. She smoothly hands off to each one of us in turn to present the details of each of the five key recommendations. Marvin closes with the roadmap and next steps. The Minister appears engaged throughout the meeting, and we see him taking notes. At the end, he asks several questions about the recommendations and wants to know more about the specifics of getting some of the recommendations off the ground. We finish the session in our allotted hour. The minister expresses his thanks to our team and the work – we are touched by his kind words. After photos with the team, he bids us farewell. 

 The ladies in their Nigerian outfits with the Head of the Road Traffic Department

Relief! This went well – our hard work paid off. Back at the hotel for a quick call with the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge leadership team to give them a summary of the day’s action. We let the SCC leaders know that Remy was an invaluable asset to the team –her dedication, connections and energy helped us immensely. We get a few brief moments of respite before we head out for a dinner arranged by the Permanent Secretary of FCTA for the team at the Obudu Grill at the Abuja Sheraton. All of the heads of the departments that we worked with were there, and we have a grand time. Coincidentally, the pianist who had entertained us at Nkoyo on our first weekend happened to be playing here!

Friday – we spend some time tying up loose ends and figure out who is going to write which section of our final report, which is due in two weeks. We troop out of Room 107, our office for the past three weeks, one final time and head to the primary school we had visited the first week. This time, we bring them soccer balls – and spend an enjoyable half hour playing with the kids. 

Next stop – the African Hair Convention at the Abuja Sheraton. Several attendees were staying at our hotel, and they’d asked us to check it out. We check out the products for sale. They have a hair braiding station and I ask the owner, Philip, whether he could braid my hair. He thinks I am pulling his leg – but I assure him I’m dead serious. He claims he can do magic with any hair type – but he’s full up now, and asks me to come back at 3 PM. We head to the poolside restaurant at the Sheraton for lunch, where Sam, Marvin and I shoot some pool while waiting for the food to arrive. I head back to see Philip at 3 PM – and he’s surprised that I am back – he wasn’t expecting it. He’s profusely sweating now – and pulls me aside to say that he really doesn’t know how to handle my hair. Alas - my plan to shock the wife and kids by showing up home in dreadlocks is dashed.

That's famed Nollywood actress Kate Henshaw - the Angelina Jolie of Nigeria. At the African Hair Summit

Our final event in Abuja is a farewell reception arranged by Judy at an art gallery. Judy’s invited all the FCTA department heads, and several young professionals to the “mixer”. The art gallery is really nice, and I spend a fair bit of time walking around. There’s live music, and wine and canapes. Lots of pictures are taken. I chit-chat with the guests. There’s a cultural music and dance performance. Remi asks each of us from the IBM SCC team to say a few parting words about our time in Abuja, and the great time we had is reflected in the sincerity of our words of thanks. The DJ gets some of us dancing. A birthday cake is then brought in for Marvin – and we all sing him Happy Birthday. He sets out for the airport – he’s the first one of our team to head back home.

Music at the reception (YouTube link)

Cultural dance at the reception (YouTube link)

  Last of the SCC team snaps - at the reception at the art gallery 

Amidst all of this, I hear talk of a pub trivia event taking place in the adjoining restaurant later that night. Nothing’s going to stand between me and some pub trivia, so I make my way in and insert myself into a team. The questions start and they’re a pretty interesting mix - there’s a visual pun round, a karaoke round, an audio round and a movie dialogs round. We were sitting in second place when Remi and I decide that its time to head back.  

With my pub trivia team 

 

Saturday we do our final breakfast at the BluCabana. It is Maria’s birthday – and we get a card and a small cake for her. 

Happy Birthday, Maria

I say my goodbyes to Sam and Divine who head out to the airport at 11 AM and to Remi who leaves at noon. I finish up a few blog posts and head out for a workout at the gym. All that’s left to do is to pack up, head to the airport and trade my home of the past three weeks for my home.