Not-so-bad Nigeria

Posted on 16 February 2009

What did we expect when we crossed the border from Cameroon into Nigeria? For some time now we had been toying with this question, and had been asked it by many of our friends, family and fellow travellers.

What did we expect it was going to be like, feel like and most importantly how safe do we think we were going to be? To be a hundred percent frank, we had inklings, small little bursts of thought about what we were heading into, but information can only take you so far and sometimes you just have to go balls to the walls and figure it out for yourself. We had a route planned, a stop overnight organized (in theory) and well, a final destination in Lagos city. We just had to get ourselves and our car over the top of the delta state and across 800km, and not take the route to Abuja (which apparently is what all the other travelers do, and is really amazing, completely safe ((depending on the political situation of course)) and one of the better places to get a glimpse of Nigeria. But it takes three extra days, time we did not have.

Now almost 90% of you reading this are probably conjuring up all the media images you have of Nigeria, most of which don’t paint a pretty picture. Nigeria is one of Africa’s most influential countries economically and militarily. It contains more than half of West Africa’s population and, according to guide books, is off traveler’s lists of places to visit due to the high rate of crime, corruption and its general susceptibility to random outbursts of gunfire, rioting, kidnapping and religious face off’s that often result in headlines snatched up by newspapers and spread across the net.

Ok, sure one cannot dispute the facts; Nigeria is not exactly an easy country to get use to and it comes with allot of mental baggage that on most occasions one cannot dismiss as over sensationalism by the media.

The emergence of democracy in May 1999 ended 16 years of consecutive military rule in Nigeria and the new president, Olusegun Obasanjo, inherited a country suffering economic stagnation ,a dysfunctional beurocracy, a restless military and the deterioration of most democratic institutions. Not to mention a petroleum based economy created in the Delta region that sees all it’s revenues squandered through corruption and mismanagement by a few amidst a hugely poverty stricken population. In the 2007 general election, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, both of the People’s Democratic Party, were elected President and Vice President, respectively. The election was marred by electoral fraud, and denounced by other candidates and international observers, and the problems rolled on. Nigerian youths are faced with very few options in terms of increasing their quility of life, most of the secondary schools are the equivilant of learning with 200 other kids, in a dimly lit classroom, by a teacher who has been trained for hopefully one week.

This is on top of the fact that luminescent five star hotels scatter the delta and their neighbours consist of a sea of shanty shacks with no appropriate means of waste disposal. This is all sprinkled with stagnation in the job department, which sees far to many young people out on the streets trying to make ends means by well..any means necessary.

Can anyone say the words “possibility of a high crime rate.”

So we headed off from the very pleasant border crossing in Cameroon, into Nigeria. As we exited the border, incredibly easily and efficiently I might add, we had visions of beautiful tarmac stretching as far as the eye could see. And from what the border officials and pretty much everyone else said to us,it would be clear sailing on fairly great roads all the way to our first night in Enugu. We had a great time of the first 2 hours on the road. The car sailed smoothly on the tar, we had wind coming though our windows (our “aircon” that really only works when you drive faster than 30km) and frankly Nigeria seemed a rather pleasant place so far. Till our GPS bleeped that we had to turn and our hearts sank when all we could see before us was mountainous chunks of evil dirt and holes..just when you think you’ve left the bad roads behindbamthe fun starts again. 7 hours and 140km later we bundled into Enugu, after some nice man on a motorbike helped us navigate through some horrible potholes, the size of a small truck.

And boy had we had our share of police stops. One thing you have to give the Nigerian police is that they are very straight forward, no beating around the proverbial bush with these guys. This is pretty much how all of our cop stops would play out:

Cops barricade road on either side, big men with even bigger guns and crazy looking darth vadar like helmets. Some are in uniforms (we like these ones) others are in Khakhi uniforms with slightly smaller guns (a little overzealous, but again nice chaps). And some are just in jeans and a t-shirt, with tinsel, or coloured ribbons hanging off their very large and mildly home made looking guns ( yahnot our favorites).Cop uses whistles, arm waving or general gun waving to stop the car. Cop peers into drivers side of car (when we say peer into , sometimes they actually leaned right in, in a nice cheek to cheek kind of way). Cop: ” Sir where are you going?” Mike: “Lagos” Cop:”what do you have for us?” Mike : “nothing” Cop: “give me that “(points at anything) Mike: “can’t do that sir, sorry” Cop : “oh, ok then , safe journey” And that’s how our whole trip went. Not one bribe paid, and in fact the police were very nice and pleasant to us, helping us with directions when we got lost and even making sure we got through a traffic circle of congestive death with our big car.

I’m sure some people might have had bad experiences, but so far we had arrived at our first night, found a dam nice spot rest our weary heads, and our poor car, that was probably cursing us silently for not going on the nice tar road to Abuja and come across a country of people in the South that were downright lovely and accommodating. We began to see a different Nigeria than the one we had come to know through the television and newspapers.

Sources:

Edem, Tatabonko Orok, “The Obongship Dispute in Calabar”: Arejoinder, April 23, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nigeria “Nigerias latest flashpoint:Religion” . bbc news .com. 28 December 2008. www.bbcnews.com Lonley Planet: West Africa http://www.kwenu.com/nigeria/crossriver/calabar/edem_obongship_dispute.htm






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