by Kosi Emmanuel Chukwujindu
SAT. 21-02-15
Today there was a fight at the site. An Ibo
worker fell out with an Hausa worker. The Ibo worker was working on the
site for the first time after a long while. He was brought in by the
site foreman. He was asked to construct the form work for one roof beam
in the fourth line because our resident carpenter was absent on that
day. The Hausa worker was a mason; one of our most loyal. He would do
whatever he was asked to do with smiles and never complained about
anything other than wage related issues.
He was rounding off his block work, when the counting supervisor came to record his work. The Ibo man who had finished his roof-beam, and so was feeling good about himself came over and joined in counting the blocks. Jos, as the Hausa guy was popularly called, asked him to please not count his blocks as it was not his duty. He had no right to count blocks, there was a designated supervisor who handled that. The Ibo man, failed to listen and in fact insisted on doing the same. This led to a rough exchange of abuses, and ignited a bloody fight between the two.
Attempts to separate these two early, failed. The result was a lot of emotional hurt, physical damages and a generally foul air in the site. Now we have a no - fighting policy which we have tried to adhere to strictly. This was no exception. The protagonist had to be brought to book. So I froze his day wage, and banned him from any other works on the site.
He Unfortunately was one of those people who were fundamentally tribalist in their belief, and so he chose to understand this judgement in the light of : "Hausa man got his day wage, Ibo man got victimized".
too bad!
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He was rounding off his block work, when the counting supervisor came to record his work. The Ibo man who had finished his roof-beam, and so was feeling good about himself came over and joined in counting the blocks. Jos, as the Hausa guy was popularly called, asked him to please not count his blocks as it was not his duty. He had no right to count blocks, there was a designated supervisor who handled that. The Ibo man, failed to listen and in fact insisted on doing the same. This led to a rough exchange of abuses, and ignited a bloody fight between the two.
Attempts to separate these two early, failed. The result was a lot of emotional hurt, physical damages and a generally foul air in the site. Now we have a no - fighting policy which we have tried to adhere to strictly. This was no exception. The protagonist had to be brought to book. So I froze his day wage, and banned him from any other works on the site.
He Unfortunately was one of those people who were fundamentally tribalist in their belief, and so he chose to understand this judgement in the light of : "Hausa man got his day wage, Ibo man got victimized".
too bad!
