By Bilkisu Labaran Ohyama, African services editor, Abuja, Nigeria, 6 April 2004

It can’t be my imagination. I’ve definitely become more religious since I relocated to Nigeria from Bush House more than a year ago. For I’ve learned the hard way that it takes a prayer and a small miracle to complete the simplest of tasks here.

Your first lesson is not to take anything for granted.

And it is, frankly, with an indescribable sense of utmost satisfaction that one achieves something as basic as paying a bill.

Communication is our worst nightmare. Internet connection is unreliable. You could go weeks with the local internet service provider down. That means it’s always a gamble when you send the daily news docket for the morning editorial meetings in Bush House.

Well, how about just phoning London, you say? OK, let’s see. Ah, but the office lines do not have international direct dialling facility.

The big man’s ‘not on seat’

You try to use the mobile phone and today of all days is when there is no signal due to congestion or some engineering work or other.

Still, you thank your stars that it’s not a case of the mobile phone company arbitrarily stopping your so-called business (and therefore ‘special’) line. Yet you paid your bill just the week before.

Fortunately colleagues in London appreciate some of the problems and the day producer would often call for a quick preliminary chat if they fail to see a Nigeria Today email.

So you get cracking, chasing the day’s big stories. But you need to interview a ‘big man’ for your package. So you go to his office but he’s, as they say here, ‘not on seat’. "When will he be back?"

His secretary barely manages a shrug and "I don’t know. Come back tomorrow."

Or maybe he is ‘on seat’ but you just happen to be number 23 in the queue of people waiting to see him. Somehow you manage with a bit of charm and the use (abuse?) of the BBC name to jump the queue.

Boring when everything works like clockwork

Phew! Rush back to the office to file and just as you rig your computer, the power goes off. Your deadline is 15 minutes away. Oh well, you are just going to have to sacrifice quality and file on the phone. So you ask London to call you on the office line to record the report.

And that’s when it happens. You wait ten minutes but there’s no call from London. So you check the phones and, of all the rotten luck, the lines have been cut off.

You call the phone company to find out why and are told it’s because you didn’t come to pick up your current bill. Somehow you should have known it was ready.

Anyway, come back tomorrow. It’s now after hours and your line can’t be restored until then.

Well, mercifully these things don’t all happen on the same day and that’s how we manage to keep our sanity here in Abuja, one of the BBC’s newest foreign bureaux servicing Nigeria’s 21.6m or one in four of all listeners to BBC World Service English output.

But I think it all makes the job more adventurous, challenging and exciting, wouldn’t you say? It’s boring when everything works like clockwork.

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