“Any day we declare public holiday. we lose money, in practical terms the customs, our ports generates about N1 billion to N1.5 billion a day, so any day they say public holiday that is N1.5 billion gone. And Nigerians love holidays, if Christmas falls on Saturday we will say we want to have Monday as holiday but to us it’s a pain because we are now looking at it in terms of raw cash.” – Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.), Comptroller-General of Customs, on Public Holidays in Nigeria
Smart governments that want economic growth for their nations take care to create conducive environments on a continuous basis for businesses to flourish. When I was in paid employment, my mental attitude about random holiday declarations was one of joy and excitement.
Due to the fact that I kept long and busy hours in the workplace at Guinness Nigeria, I always welcomed the opportunity to take a break from the intense routine.
What I never realized was the impact of those sudden announcements on business decision making and planning.
It never occurred to me that a lot of planned activities often got disrupted by those public holiday declarations. What was more, the frequent decision to extend holidays declared over many days, sometimes into weekends, often worsened the impact on business.
By the time I became self-employed, I experienced first hand the very bad sides of those random public holiday declarations
For instance, I once met with a prospective client who wanted me to commence work on a web development project needed for a project his company was launching. There was a lot of work to be done, and other parties involved that I had to meet with to progress the job.
We agreed that I would pick up the agreed advance payments cheque the next day (Thursday), so that I could then prepare my content generation questionnaire and send to him on Friday.
He was due to travel over the weekend, and had emphasized that he wanted work to proceed as agreed over the weekend (he’d paid extra for that to happen).
We parted amicably, both of sure that we had covered all necessary ends. I got home that night and immediately began preparing a folder on my laptop for the project documents. Then I went to sleep.
The next morning I woke as early as 6.00a.m, had my bath and got dressed, and was headed out of the house when my wife asked me where I was going. Surprised, I replied that I had an early appointment with the client I’d told her about few days earlier. That was when she dropped the bomb – saying a public holiday had been announced the night before!
Not only was that day – Thursday – a holiday, but the Friday as well as as Monday of the coming week has also been declared holidays as well!
My head was spinning. It was not the first time this had happened to me. And I could not help feeling stupid for failing to check news about current affairs, like I’d vowed to myself in the past.
A quick call to my client revealed he was also just learning of the announcements. And it had affected plans he’d made for other aspects of his business, including orders he’d placed for inputs to be used in the production process he operated.
Long story short, we were forced to put most of our plans on hold. Even if I picked up the cheque, the bank would not be open to cash it in. Back then, electronic bank transfers and ATM cards were not yet available. So, the options were quite limited.
The above experience is just one of many. And the multiplier effect was such that others outside of myself were affected.
For instance, people I needed to pay for their own products and services also had to wait till the holidays ended and I got the money. Same applied to those who my client had to do transactions with – including employees, and suppliers.
And that’s why the quote credited to the Customs boss is important – and relevant to all other aspects of the economy. Decision making by government about public holidays must be done with careful consideration for the potentially negative impact it can have on income-generative activities of businesses and the country at large.
Therefore citizens who demand for holidays at random, and who demand for extensions of such breaks, need to be aware of these problems directly related to their occurrence.
We need to be more responsible in the ways we ask for concessions from our governments.
Government on their part need to stop being needlessly sentimental and to deliberately educate citizens on the above implications of granting holidays and extended holidays at random!
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