EMBA 27 INTENSIVE WEEK – PART 1

First Intensive Week – Part 1

As part of the Lagos Business School EMBA curriculum, the students are scheduled to come to the school for one week of intensive lectures every quarter.

I made every effort to be available for this all-important week in my first semester at LBS. This was important to me because it would give me the opportunity to be physically available for classes since my EMBER journey commenced. So far, I had attended all of my classes online through Zoom because I live in Abuja, which is about 800 kilometers from Lagos.

I arrived in Lagos on Sunday, a day before the start of the intensive week.

My flight from Abuja to Lagos was scheduled for 1425hrs.

So, I got to the airport earlier, to create enough time for COVID-19 protocols and the collection of my boarding pass.

By 1345hrs, I had collected my boarding pass and settled down at the airport for departure.

I decided to do some work on my laptop while waiting for the departure call, which I believed would happen within a couple of minutes.

Honestly, I waited for another four hours without any sign of departure.

Finally, the departure call came about 1800hrs and the reason given for the long delay was that the aircraft did not have aviation fuel for the trip.

This goes to show the unaccounted man-hours that are wasted in our country during this type of fuel crisis.

Nonetheless, I was excited that we were finally ready to leave for Lagos.

The flight was a smooth one, and we finally arrived at the Murtala Mohammed domestic airport – terminal 1.

After alighting from the aircraft, we were conveyed to the arrival hall. My expectation was that my luggage would be out within ten minutes, but that was not the case.

Without exaggeration, I spent more than thirty minutes waiting for my luggage.

Sincerely, the inefficiencies in our public systems are disgusting. Sometimes, I wonder what we must do differently to change the course of the Nigerian economy for the better.

Luckily, I later got my luggage because at some point I was afraid the airline had left it in Abuja.

Before my arrival, I had made arrangements for hotel accommodation.

I made a reservation at the Gran Melia Hotel, a hotel opposite Lagos Business School.

Immediately I got my luggage, I booked a Bolt ride that would take me from the airport to the hotel.

Luckily, the road was free of the normal heavy vehicular traffic on the Ajah-Epe expressway, possibly because it was late in the night.

Unfortunately, the Google Map took us to a different location, which implies that the hotel address setup on the Google Map was not adequately done.

Frankly, this was embarrassing and demonstrated the common feature among contemporary Nigerian youths and how they are unperturbed about how responsibilities and tasks are completed. Today, the majority of Nigerian youths lack excellence and diligence in performing their tasks.

They perform tasks without any desire to ensure that they are excellently completed.

My anticipation was that whoever setup the hotel address on Google Maps should have tested it to ascertain that it was properly done. I have seen businesses lose customers who tried severally to locate the business address to no avail, and out of frustration, they went back home.

After several attempts to locate the hotel, we finally found it, and I checked in to rest for the next day’s classes.