When I was asked to travel to Nigeria for a Project, I was not really excited. Especially after reading the travel warnings issued by the US and OZ. Nevertheless I had to travel. I had no other choice…
My total travel time to Nigeria took almost 22 hours including the stopover in Dubai for six hours (and excluding the six hours it took from Lagos to Abuja). When I was in Dubai, I thought those were the last few hours in a developed country.
Lagos and Abuja: Lagos is the economic and financial capital of Nigeria. Lagos was the capital of Nigeria from 1914 up to 1991; it was stripped of this title when the Federal Capital Territory was established at the purpose-built city of Abuja. Lagos is similar to Mumbai (so they say) and Abuja is like Delhi.
I was supposed to land in Lagos and take a connecting flight to Abuja. (Not a bad idea; I could cover two cities)
When I landed in Lagos, the flight attendant handed over a photo copy of the landing card (Yes Photo copy!! There are no printed landing cards). They set the expectations very clearly even before arrival. I filled up the landing card and went to the immigration section. There were two queues: One for the foreigners and the other for Nigerians. The foreigners queue was very quiet. I heard a commotion in the Nigerian side. Everyone was shouting at the top of their voice. No doubt the foreigners queue was very quiet. Obviously they were terrified at the sight of Nigerians fighting amongst themselves. They would have feared that they might show their anger on them at any point of time. Finally we came to know the subject of the discussion. Some of the Nigerians in the queue were terribly pissed off with the facilities available in the airport. One of them mentioned to the foreigners that the passengers have to pay $1 for the trolley in the airport.
The Lagos airport was very small. I could not imagine such a small airport for such a big city, esp., when it’s the commercial capital of the country. There was only one luggage conveyor belt. And there were passengers from many flights who were waiting for their baggage. There was confusion all around. I realized why the Nigerian was so agitated. This incident gave me the first assurance that at least some of them are good, if not all.
When you come out of Lagos airport, they have a system of verifying whether you have picked the correct luggage. I thought they might have such a system as some of the passengers might take others baggage and get away with it. A person verified my baggage tag on the boarding pass and on the luggage. Then he asked me to give him some chocolates. Somehow I managed to convince him that I do not have any chocolates and ran towards the driver who was waiting to pick me up and take me to the Lagos National airport, for my travel to Abuja. I was wondering what would be the state of the national airport esp., when the status of the international airport is in such a condition.
The national airport was ten minutes drive from the international airport. The landscape of Nigeria is similar to that of India. National airport was slightly better when compared to the international one. I checked in my baggage and waited for four hours to catch the connecting virgin flight to Abuja.
When I boarded the flight to Abuja, for the first time in my life I faced a situation where two people were assigned the same seat number in the aircraft. !!! Weird isn’t it? This confusion has happened even though the boarding pass is generated in the system. There were several people in the aircraft complaining of the same issue. The flight was delayed for an hour, because of this confusion. Some implementation of IT system has gone wrong!!
The flight to Abuja took off finally, when the flight attendant requested some of them to board another flight and some people were accommodated in the business class.
A wonderful first impression isn’t it? Expect more on Nigeria and its people in my following posts. Please post your comments on this post. Am expecting it :). Thanks in advance….
