My Parastatal Deducted ₦18,000 From My Salary For 'Office Maintenance' And I Only Found Out At Home

I checked my phone at 9pm on Tuesday, after my daughter finally slept. The alert showed my salary had dropped by ₦18,000. No memo. No email. Just a line item called 'office maintenance levy.'

I sat there doing the math. ₦18,000 is my daughter's termly school fees. It is two weeks of fuel at current prices. It is the difference between buying beef at Wuse market and buying the cheaper cuts. I have worked in this parastatal for eight years and I have never once seen a broken chair repaired or a leaking tap fixed. The policy says one thing, the reality says another.

I did not shout. I did not send an angry email at midnight. I wrote it down in my notebook, the one I keep for myself. Then I started asking questions the next morning, quietly, one desk at a time. By Thursday, four other staff had checked their alerts and found the same deduction. None of them had noticed either.

We are not owed an explanation. We are owed the money. But the system is slow, and it moves only when enough people push at once. So we are pushing. Small, quiet, together.

How many of us are getting deductions we never agreed to and just... not checking?