The prompt is; “The Art of negotiation, how do you get what you want”
When it comes to getting what I want, I am very patient in the pursuit. First, I gather all the required knowledge and this is where I get the upper hand. I have battled with higher authorities in my country who wanted to take advantage of my situation but the one that stood out in all these battles is the battle I had with the electrical distribution company. It all started when I got into Uni and I became less concerned with the activities of my compound. Basically, the neighbours do not allow me to have a say in what goes on because according to them, I no longer live in the compound despite it being my family house.
Eventually when I got done with Uni, I didn't go back home. Instead, I relocated to see if the grass would be greener on the other side. For the years that I was away, a whole lot went down. There was a time during one of my visits home I discovered that the neighbours were not paying electricity tariff. What they did was to pass the wire supplying the compound electricity underground into the various buildings including ours.
They didn't stop there, one of them got some dogs for the compound which scared the NEPA officials away. Usually, the wire ought to be hung to the electricity line and since we had no wire hanging indicating that we were connected to the transformer via the electricity lines, the officials let us be with the mindset that we've been disconnected.
The compound went on with that illegal arrangement for almost a decade. People were moving in and moving out of the compound without clearing their electricity bill and this led to a lot of accumulations ranging to millions of Naira. I had made up my mind to relocate home since leaving home didn't go as planned. It was when I came back home that the worst happened. Apparently, the neighbour who had the dogs relocated and left the compound with his dogs.
Noticing that we no longer have dogs, the electrical distribution officials or rather NEPA as they are popularly called in my country invaded my compound and that was when they discovered the wires buried underground that supplied us electricity we don't pay for. Luckily, I was home and their noise made me come out to see what's going on.
I saw one of them making a video while the other dug out the wires. The moment they saw me, they got really hostile and threatened with a lawsuit given the evidence that they have. I was speechless and there was nothing I could really say in defence so I tried to reason with them. At that point of negotiation, I was under so I needed to be persuasive by reasoning with them and not be authoritative by being commanding.
Since I have not been around, the officials do not know me. Thus, they felt I was a new tenant so I used that to my advantage. I explained to them how it will be quite unfair that the new tenants will be made to pay tariffs used by old tenants. After giving them a sound argument, they agreed to not bill us from when the meter stopped reading which was almost a decade ago. Instead, they asked when I moved into the compound and I told them so they billed from there. The money was still a lot and I pleaded for further reduction.
It was at that moment the table turned and I got the upper hand. Given the systemic corruption that the country is plagued with, the officials decided to play the greed card and I got them exactly where I wanted them. They asked that since the money is much, I should say how much I can afford. At that point, I asked them to split the total money into the number of occupants in the compound. They did and that left our share to a hundred thousand Naira which was still on the high side for me.
At the end of the negotiation, we arrived at a fifty thousand Naira bribe of which I transferred to them immediately and just our flat got reconnected, plus the videos of the illegal connection were deleted.
Wrapping things up, the other of my neighbours used his religious brother and he was also connected back of which everyone else connected from him.
It should be worthy to note that during the whole negotiation process, I had everything on record without their notice because I know how such things turn out. To cut the long story short, these officials wanted to make us their ATM, they were supposed to create a new billing meter for us to be paying to and close the old one as part of the deal. But as expected they wanted to play a fast one. Thus, they refused to create the new bill. Instead, they wanted the money to be paid to the personal account of their supervisor.
I needed to further commit them neck deep into the whole illegality so I spoke to the other neighbours and we paid two months' electricity bill into their private account and kept the receipt for evidence. By the third month, they came again and we refused to pay them any more money. Instead, we insisted on our bill to be created.
Already, I have done my own research and I'm aware that as field workers, they can't create bill for us. Anything bill creation, the order has to come from their head office covering that particular area. Thus it was me who now started threatening them with all the money I have transferred and the voice notes of the whole illegality. Afraid to lose their jobs they left our compound alone and for two years we enjoyed free electricity till a swap happened and a new set of officials came in.
The new set was more hostile than the ones that I dealt with. They wanted to continue the whole illegality but I wanted it to end so when we got disconnected, I took up the issue to their head office and filed a complaint. In order to save face, their boss called them to order and everything was resolved. We got a new billing meter and till date we have been paying into that meter.
Above is my response to the Inleo prompt day 5. You can participate Here
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