Nigerians are hardworking people. I say this with all sense of responsibility. Nigerians work under the sun and in the rain daily to make a living for themselves.
These efforts are accompanied with a lot of stress. As someone living in Nigeria, there is already a level of stress that you go through. You live with the problems that stresses you in one way or the other. Problems like the unavailability of social amenities such as good roads, power, water and healthcare systems. The lack of or inadequacy of any or all of these is hellish for Nigerians.
The day of an average Nigerian starts with looking for water to take a bath before leaving home in the morning. When you turn on your bulb without light, the idea of cooking with electricity isn't tenable. You light up your gas if you are lucky to have one else you may have to set fire with charcoal or firewoods.
When you eventually get yourself ready for work after burning a certain amount of calories, you set yourself on the bad road to go to work. The unsolicited dance orchestrated by the road filled with potholes would probably drain some energy out of you before you get to work.
You arrive at your workplace, spend eight hours or more on the job before following the same level of stress to return home. You may be lucky to see power restored. If you are unlucky, you faced another hurricane task of setting the firewoods to get your dinner prepared.
At the end of the whole day, you would be left with just four hours to sleep.
I decided to break the daily routine of an average Nigerian down so that we can understand what Nigerians are going through. Some Nigerians may be free from some or all of the mentioned challenges. However the percentage is infinitesimal. A few living in highbrow areas in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and the likes may be exempted but I can tell you that more than 80% of the working population are facing some or all of these challenges.
The question now is how do they survive with this kind of work schedule?
Imagine a daily routine that only gives you a 4 hour rest. What time will you have to do house cleaning, wash your clothes and get water in the house if you don't want to look for water daily?
All that you will have to get all these done is two days. If you are a Christian, a substantial part of Sunday is already occupied. I remember one of my lecturers in the university would always tell us to make sure we sleep for at least six hours daily irrespective of the tasks in front of us to be accomplished. It is obvious that you may not be lucky to get such hours of sleep as a Nigerian worker.
Without proper rest, someone's life is endangered. There is no work that is worth endangering someone's health.
The way forward is to revisit the working hours and days of Nigerian workers.
If I have my way, I will make sure that no worker works more than 6 or 7 hours a day. If a work must extend beyond this number of hours, more hands should be hired so that shifting could be in operation. If this is well implemented, every worker would have the needed time to sleep and regain his or her strength before the following day's work. It will reduce fatigue and total breakdown.
The next thing is to add Fridays to weekends. The working days will become four days while the weekend will be three days. This will create more time for every worker to attend to his or her home or family needs.
In order to encourage workers to make their well-being a top priority, every worker will be entitled to some days (like 10 or more working days) off to afford them the opportunity to check their health and rest further when necessary. Every worker can write to take permission for observing the days at any time of the year they so desire. This will increase the level of quality health and productivity of the people.