Special Issues

   Your Ad Here
 
Web NigerianNews.com

Nigerian
News



Babatunde Adenodi
Pharmacist
East Orange,
New Jersey
 USA

send email

more articles by Adenodi

If you must travel out of Lagos by road, you need special prayers. It takes 2-3 hours to get to the toll gate from my place. It takes about 4 hours to get to any part of the old west and it takes 3 hours to get from toll gate to your house in Lagos. In other words, it takes almost as long to get to the toll gate as it does to get to your destination from the toll gate! The toll gate to my house is exactly 16 miles! It took an average of 1 hour to travel a distance of 5 miles. This is because of self-inflicted “go-slow”. The last car to get to an intersection wants to be the first to get out of there and because of this mentality, no one wants to yield! Most importantly, I dare say that 80 percent of Lagos drivers did not do the road test before they started driving! I know at least 10 drivers like that! They buy a car, do a crash driving practice and start driving just like that! Then they pay officials of the Motor Vehicle Department to get them a driver’s license without ever going there! The consequence is total chaos that we see on the roads.

 

 

Vacationing in Nigeria with pain
 by Tunde Adenodi.
 

Going home is always fun. There is always an air of anticipation of what you are going to meet: Your relatives, your friends, your neighbors. There is also always an air of serious apprehension on what you will not want to meet: Armed robbers, NEPA and serious traffic jams that discourage the avid fun loving vacationer from having some fun out of your immediate environment. Certainly, no one wants to have anything to do with the police, customs immigration, the local government, the state and Federal Governments. Not that you can do without them. But the most minimal contact you have to have with those bodies, the better for you.

To guarantee your independence from these bodies, you must have done the following: For security of your house, hire live-in guards, it might  not be a bad idea if you own a gun and are not afraid to use it; for water, equip your house with a bore-hole; for electricity, install a powerful generator and make friend with your local petrol station to guarantee you an undisturbed supply of diesel oil; and if you must go out on occasions, make friend with a young man who drives very well and hire some marabouts to pray for your peaceful stay. Vacationing in Nigeria should not be taken lightly.

“Daddy, when you get to your Geria, will you send me to the boarding house?” My daughter asked me many years ago when she was four. “Your Geria”! I said. “What do you mean? It is also your own Geria”!  Every time I mentioned “Nigeria”, she thought I actually said “My Geria”! I had to explain to her that the name of my country was N-i-g-e-r-i-a and not Mygeria!

Thirty or so years later, I am tempted to agree with this innocent child that she was right. It was Mygeria and still is MyGeria. For my generation, it is Our Geria. She has nothing to do with it and as things are, may never have anything to do with it!

The flight to or from MyGeria, I mean Nigeria, is always boring. The six hour wait in Europe is a punishment. And the security in those airports make you feel unwanted and undeserved of honor and dignity. Afterwards, you are a Nigerian, deserving of such indignity as they may wish to bestow on you. That you have dual citizenship makes matters worst for you. They see you as one who might wish to take advantage of this to engage in all kinds of illegal activities. And more often than not, they are right!

If you are travelling light, some Nigerians approach you and beg to add to your luggage from their excess. “No”! I always say. “I do not know what you have in your luggage and do not wish to take responsibility for something I cannot vouch for”. Those who check us in are familiar with this practice and insist that they pay. Most often, they pay but not before humiliating themselves and all Nigerians in front of everyone around. Why would anyone carry a 50 pound bag of Rice from USA to Nigeria and expect to pay nothing in excess?

The behavior of Nigerians changes on landing in Lagos Murtala Muhammed Airport. We become noisier and more aggressive. We do not wish to stand quietly on line. Not because we do not want to. But because Nigerian immigration and customs encourage disorderliness by pulling out some people from out of the line to attend to them, or the conveyor belt breaks down every 5 minutes, or that the heat makes travelers so uncomfortable that they might explode in anger for a small infraction, or that custom officers demand for gifts as they attend to you. And having travelled for 36 hours without a bath or a shave, no one has the patience to stand in line for an official whose primary goal is to find a way of frustrating you or milking some unearned fee out of you. You are now in Nigeria. These add to tension on arrival and paradoxically help you to adjust to the fast pace of life and living in Nigeria’s megacity of Lagos.

Arriving in Lagos at night is dangerous. And taking a cab at this time is ill-advised and foolhardy. Even, walking to the car park at night with your luggage is not a wise thing to do. You are accosted at the lot by those whose faces you cannot see and insist that they deserve gifts you should have brought for them! What about the ubiquitous mallam who wishes to sell dollars or pounds sterling in the dark at the dead of night at the poorly lit car park! It is better to have your driver get the car and meet you in front of the building in front of everyone around! I found out the hard way!

Going home from the airport requires special prayers. You do not know who may have targeted you at the airport. You do not know if someone is following you. So, you order your driver to do the next logical thing: Drive as if you are crazy! Drive as if you have a death wish.  Drive so fast that anyone who tries to overtake is destined to crash! It is like a kamikaze drive! Not to forget the police in their black uniforms at night. Or what you might think is the police. Look, dear readers: you are now in Lagos, Your own Geria!

From a city block down to your street, there is no sign of life. It is pitch-dark. NEPA had struck. You do not want to announce your arrival to neighbors that late at night and paradoxically, that early in your stay. You talk in whispers so that they don’t hear your voice and go to bed in the dark after a good shower. And most importantly, since you are not sure no one followed you from the airport; you sleep with only one eye closed! Now you know that your vacation has started!

At dead of night, NEPA comes to life. You are forced to get up, pull the first latch, turn the key, pull the second latch; turn the other key clock-wise, no, anti-clock-wise, before you get to the next door going to the kitchen. Repeat the same thing before you get to the one going to the back-yard where, if you must use water, you have to switch on the water pump before NEPA “with-holds” the “power”! And by the time you do all these, NEPA is gone! If you try to go back to sleep, NEPA may come back. But will they? The only thing that NEPA does best is to switch off. You can bet your shirt they will. What you cannot bet on is when they will be back.  While contemplating on this, a mosquito comes by to remind you of malaria. Then you rush back in to wait for NEPA, which may or may not come. Now you are sure you are home.

The last time I was in Lagos, I had not more than 1 hour of electricity in my place in 9 days. If this is not shameful to our leaders, what is? Why can we not make NEPA work?

Since you did not have a good night sleep, you may wish to stay in bed late. You go back to bed by 4:30 am and start snoozing when the local mosque blasts its call to prayer at 5.00 am. Then; followed by your local church singing and dancing in prayer and supplication! Not to forget the itinerant preacher, jingle bell in hand, who walks down your neighborhood asking everyone to take heed “because the judgment of God is at hand and the end of the world is close!” With such a loud noise bellowing from these neighborhood mosques and churches, you might feel that there are at least 10, 000 worshippers. No, there are only a handful of people. Not more than twenty!

If you must travel out of Lagos by road, you need special prayers. It takes 2-3 hours to get to the toll gate from my place. It takes about 4 hours to get to any part of the old west and it takes 3 hours to get from toll gate to your house in Lagos. In other words, it takes almost as long to get to the toll gate as it does to get to your destination from the toll gate! The toll gate to my house is exactly 16 miles! It took an average of 1 hour to travel a distance of 5 miles. This is because of self-inflicted “go-slow”. The last car to get to an intersection wants to be the first to get out of there and because of this mentality, no one wants to yield! Most importantly, I dare say that 80 percent of Lagos drivers did not do the road test before they started driving! I know at least 10 drivers like that! They buy a car, do a crash driving practice and start driving just like that! Then they pay officials of the Motor Vehicle Department to get them a driver’s license without ever going there! The consequence is total chaos that we see on the roads.

If you have been out of the country for a long time and you are rather elderly, you wish to go back to where you came from after staying for a few days. You long for uninterrupted power, water, free flow of traffic and all things that make life bearable in those foreign lands. You want to sleep and sleep well! Yes, you love your country, but you tend to love your peace of mind even more.

In spite of all this, I would not spend my vacation anywhere else but “My Geria” and I dare say your Geria too! May God Almighty save us from ourselves!
 

 

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

 

  Unique visitors: 1067