Battling with traffic, bad infrastructure, gangsters ...

If you think Dublin is bad, you should try Lagos. Michael Peel spent a working day with Kufre Ekanem, an advertising manager with CadburyNigeria

Cadbury Nigeria, which is listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, is a rare example of multinational involvement in the country outside the oil sector. It sells products including Knorr stock cubes and Trebor mints as well as chocolate and other sweets.

Just before 7 a.m. Mr Kufre Ekanem leaves his house in Lagos, the commercial capital. He has to be on the road by 7 a.m., before the city's notorious traffic builds up, tripling a 10- or 15-minute drive time.

7.45 a.m. - Mr Ekanem goes through data produced by an agency employed by Cadbury to check that newspapers and broadcasters are honouring their obligations to carry advertisements paid for by the group. He says the fragmentation of the Nigerian media makes tracking hard and almost half the agreements to carry publicity are not fulfilled, adding that 3.5 to 5 per cent of the campaign's budget goes on monitoring.

8.05 a.m. - A mug of Bournvita is brought in. Bournvita is made on the premises, where Cadbury has to use its own generators because of the unreliability of the state electricity company, Nepa - said to stand for "Never expect power any time".

9.30 a.m. - Mr Ekanem goes to look at a giant new advertising hoarding site at the front of the building. On the way back to his office, he passes the in-house clinic, a reflection of the country's poor hospital network and lack of social security provision.

10.10 a.m. - Mr Ekanem picks the phone up and puts it down again immediately. "We were talking about infrastructure," he sighs. "You pick up the phone to make a call but you can't make one call. So you end up having to go to the place." The service offered by Nitel, the state-owned firm, is notoriously bad, with lines sometimes going down for days or being cut without explanation.

11.30 a.m. - A delegation arrives from Kick-Off, a South African soccer magazine that has started publishing in Nigeria. Football is one of the pastimes popular throughout a country prone to inter-regional tensions: the national team has been described as the state's one functioning institution.

12.45 p.m. - Mr Ekanem sets out for a series of advertising site inspections, which he says he has to do personally, and apologises for the lack of lunch. He says his travelling time can reach three or four hours a day.

1 p.m. - A traffic jam has trapped the car next to the Lagos toll gate on the way to Victoria Island. These "go-slows" provide opportunities for the armed robbery that is a perpetual concern and makes it inadvisable to travel on inter-city roads after dark. Asked if he is concerned that driving around in a car with the Cadbury logo will attract unwanted attention, Mr Ekanem replies: "If your vehicle is targeted, it will not be because of branding."

1.30 p.m. - Just off the third mainland bridge, one of Mr Ekanem's co-passengers, who does not work for Cadbury, gives 50 naira to an opportunistic plainclothes toll-collector whose official status is unclear. It is another hidden cost of doing business in Nigeria: payments known as "dash" are given as incentives to speed up work, or to local gangsters known as "area boys" whose often polite demands for money are given force by an implied threat of violence.

1.45 p.m. - Mr Ekanem's car pulls into a no-stopping zone between the third mainland bridge and a slip road leading off it. Two blue vans with sirens scream past as he and a colleague walk towards the middle of the bridge against the flow of three lanes of traffic. Stepping off the highway on to the concrete edge of the bridge is an unattractive option, as parts of the guard rail have fallen away into the lagoon below. Mr Ekanem laughs at the suggestion that he should receive danger money and pronounces himself satisfied with the position of the hoarding he came to inspect. "Not bad from where I was looking at it," he says, "but I will have to come back and see it from a different angle."

2.05 p.m. - Mr Ekanem arrives for a long meeting at Cool FM that was scheduled to start half an hour earlier. He is dismayed to find his preferred Cool FM slots have already been taken by multinationals such as South African Airways, a company trying to benefit from the lack of reliable air services for business travellers in west Africa.

4.25 p.m. - After another journey punctuated by traffic jams, Mr Ekanem heads to the office's subsidised canteen for a late lunch of pepper soup made with cow liver and Knorr, followed by fried chicken and chips.

5.30 pm: The day ends in tidying up and some form-filling. Mr Ekanem plans to go after work to a small Bible study class. Religion, central to Nigeria's social life, provides a means of dealing with the frustrations of each day's labour. "[You have to] keep working and praying for it to get better," Mr Ekanem says. "But you don't wait for it to get better before you start working." - (Financial Times Service)