9th August, 2010
The rate at which civil servants in the Lagos State Government civil service neglect their work to watch the television during office hours is perplexing.
Alausa Rhythms’ investigation within the government secretariat revealed that many civil servants spent several of hours during the day to watch television, especially Yoruba home videos.
Some of them would be so engrossed in the film they are watching that they would not know when a stranger enters the office. At times, some of them would see your presence as a distraction to them and they would answer you coldly.
As early as 8.00 a.m. every day, many civil servants would tune their television set in their offices to Galaxy to watch Yoruba home video. Sometimes, you could see some of them crowding round a television set at the reception to watch the film.
They would watch TV till around 10 a.m. when the film would end. In this process, about two working hours would have been lost to this time-killer of a box, thus, preventing the government from making much progress.
Also, by around 11.20 a.m. each day, many of them, especially women would be glued to Lagos Television to watch another round of Yoruba home video, which would end around 1.00 p.m. Many dared not miss this pleasurable moment.
Many offices in the various ministries at the secretariat have television sets, making it easy for civil servants to watch television during office hours. Those in offices where there are no television sets simply go to others where they have to watch the movies.
The new trend now is that several offices within the secretariat now have satellite dishes and the workers could watch movies unabated throughout the day.
In some offices in the ministries, you will see that many of the television sets are tuned perpetually to African Magic on DSTV where they watch Yoruba movies on daily basis.
The sad thing about this is that there is now a part of the African Magic dedicated solely to Yoruba movies for 24 hours each day.  This is where many civil servants while away time watching Yoruba movies.
Recently, Alausa Rhythms was in a particular ministry and right in the office of one of the commissioners, some of the staff were so engrossed in watching a Yoruba movie that they abandoned their duty.
Concerned about this development, a civil servant recently lamented that he went to one of the offices for official purpose, but that the people in the office were so engrossed watching a Yoruba movie on African Magic that they did not know when he came in, even after drawing their attention from the film, he was given a cold reception.
The civil servant wondered how movies could prevent his colleagues from concentrating on their duties which they were paid to do and wished that the state government could regulate the use of the television, which is stealing large chunk of time from the civil servants at the expense of their work.
In Ondo State, Governor Olusegun Mimiko has banned watching of television in the civil service so that civil servants could concentrate on the work they were paid to do. The government had lamented the number of hours being lost to watching television by civil servants and decided to place a ban on television watching.
Recently, the Head of Service, Mr. Adesegun Ogunlewe, in a circular said government would no longer spend colossal amount of money purchasing television sets for ministries.
He said that before television sets could be bought for ministries, an approval must be gotten from the governor, in order to checkmate waste and excesses.
Governor Babatunde Fashola had been called upon to urgently look into this act of civil servants abandoning their duty to watch television several hours during office time.