Careful: Why Blind Faith In “Experts” Has An Expiry Date

Several years ago when I was little, it was normal for me to instantly trust anyone that my parents were or seemed at ease with. Aunts and Uncles fitted this billing. Anything told to me by an uncle was swallowed hook, line, and sinker. So, in this particular incident, my uncle talked about the Congo (the DRC as we know it today). He spoke of how the Congo had big and heavy-headed pigmies. He said that their heads, when compared to regular-sized people, were quite huge so much so that they could lose balance and fall painfully to the ground. My uncle told us that at least one person in the pigmy household had to sleep upright while firmly supported by a vertical post so that he was in a position to aid the ones who had slept horizontally when the morning arrived. And even when upright, he still had to be careful lest he fell and left everyone helplessly pinned to the floor by their heavy heads. He mentioned that when an aeroplane flew past, none of the pigmies could dare look up in the sky because they would obviously lose balance and fall down hard. So, it was best that they kept calm as the noisy plane above faded into the distance.

He finished it off by saying that at such times, helpers quickly became victims of their own efforts to get innocent children back on their feet. The sound of plane engines sent the village into a panic mode because it was thought that the heavens had brought a curse upon them. Many years later, most of our uncles don't seem as informative as they were back then. If anything, we hardly go back to some of them for advice and particularly in my case, after I independently verified that mine had never been to the Congo. This was hogwash and now hard to fathom how and why they came up with such stories back then. For many years, I was reminded time and again that Nigeria was not a destination worth considering. Many stories about nasty experiences with the West Africans had dominated several conversations. Truth is, they were victims of misrule and the many years of successive military dictatorships have left some indelible consequences on the national reputation of Nigeria. Back then, many of the nationals had to survive under harsh circumstances and did what they had to in order to thrive. I went to Lagos on a job assignment and had many of these negative myths dispelled. Yes! At the time of my visit, they had issues with mains electricity and an open sewer system pungently streaming away by the roadside. But, what’s unknown to many other would-be visitors is that muggings and general theft are nearly unheard of in many parts of Lagos. We cannot cast a stone when our backyard harbours a constituency of miscreants. The positive aspects as I witnessed in Nigeria by far outweighed the negative side. The economy is thriving and there are plenty of opportunities to venture into. But many uncles around will continue to discourage innocent nephews and nieces from heading to West Africa even when they themselves have never set foot. I can do business in Nigeria and my visit gave me the faith and much respect for Nigerians. Blind faith, has its expiry date and it mimics a sudden death. Both the hitherto naive one and the supposed expert learn of it when conversations are not as forthcoming as before. The excitement is gone. Many people in positions of privilege never see this date coming. They forget that people around them gather and comprehend new knowledge continuously. The day that the truth comes out in the open, the talker will be deserted as his or her information is no longer dependable. In today's world, Google and co come in handy and one must be careful not to pass as unreliable. There is no worse experience than when clients lose faith in you courtesy of enlightenment from unapologetic sources in competition with you. They are agonizingly ruthless and as such, you must prepare yourself well enough in advance. Take the case of a leading corporate executive who as an alumnus of an established university, returns there every two years to hire fresh talent. He was always proud of his alma mater and vouched for its graduates at every opportunity that presented itself. Things, however, took a nasty turn when a different university made its case to his organization and proved to him that their new teaching techniques could impact his bottom line by 20% within a year of onboarding the said graduates. After trying out graduates from the new university, the employer discovered glaring loopholes in the earlier varsity’s students. The new ones needed limited supervision and delivered the desired results at half the time taken by the previous favourites. Now feeling cheated, the employer moved on swiftly and never returned to his alma mater for fresh talent. Whereas people don't normally approach business issues fervently, this particular instance was emotionally devastating for the employer because he now had to view an institution he once cherished in a different light. It hurt so badly. Nkt! Word quickly spread far and wide and as one university thrived, the other struggled to get back to pole position even after making amends. The trust was lost. Today, we have many such institutions and organizations that suffer because prevailing fundamentals are operating at much higher levels than what they offer to the market. Don't be outpaced lest your offering expires unceremoniously. Getting ranked in past tense by clients is a very bitter pill to swallow. This kind of situation also forced my friend Ben to do away with a confidant.

Ben has had his insurance covers taken from the same underwriter for fifteen years. Nyundo, his agent has served him well for the last five years. Recently, Ben's house got vandalized while upcountry with his family over the Christmas holidays. Property worth millions was stolen and worse still; the insurance company has declined to compensate Ben.

It turns out that Nyundo the trusted agent never remitted premium payments for the past two years, but got the company to provide cover while promising to settle the required premium. Technically, Ben is covered but claim settlement cannot proceed without full receipt of the outstanding premium.

It is a catch-22 situation. The regulator will not accept any explanation for cover without premiums and at the same time failure to settle a claim when a policy document was issued amounts to escaping a contractual obligation to the client.

Nyundo has vanished into thin air and plans to resurface once calm returns. Ben painfully settles the premium a second time and then personally follows up on the claim settlement. The man who was retained to do the job of running around has absconded.

The aftermath of blind faith only teaches us that if you do not inspect, then do not expect. We must keep auditing all our transactions with our appointed experts. Nyundo resurfaced when what mattered had long expired. As they say, trust is like virginity, you have only one chance to lose it. And when it happens, you never get it back.

The most that you can do now is only to tie your hopes on finishing the long and painful journey, to secondary trust and it may take a lifetime. Do not fall for the traps that put an expiry date on your expertise.