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t is tradition in my part of the country, in Nigeria, that one year after the funeral of a loved one, a memorial service is held. The service signifies the actual end of the mourning period when the loved ones of the deceased officially shed their mourning garbs and move on with their own lives. More than a year ago, my mother passed on and after the funeral in November of 2011, we resolved to have the memorial service December 2012. The December date was the most convenient for most of us.

For many years now, I have always visited Nigeria at Christmas time. Not only is it a refreshing break from work for me, it also gives me the opportunity to rest and regroup in readiness for the rigors and challenges of the New Year. Every year, around the month of October, therefore, like a child, I develop this joyful anticipation that begins to build up until I eventually get to Nigeria. My joy was always rooted in the fact that I would get to see family and friends again as well as revisit the places I grew up in, which for lack of exact words to use, I would call my former stomping grounds. I slowly started getting ready for the memorial service trip around September. This time, though, the feeling was different. The joyful anticipation was missing. I had this odd sense of simply going to Nigeria to get the memorial service over with and return. Of course I knew why that feeling was so pervasive. It would be the first Christmas I would spend in Nigeria without my mother present. But there was another bigger issue. Since I began to contemplate the travel, everyone I knew, both here and in Nigeria, who had any say in what I did, discouraged the visit at this point in time. Their reason was that there was too much insecurity in the nation – indiscriminate kidnapping of people for ransom in the eastern part of Nigeria. All these came together to create a pall in my countenance that refused to lift. Things were even worse when some of the people I know here in the diaspora, who were billed to visit Nigeria this past December, started cancelling their proposed trips.

As the date of my trip drew nigh, and as more stories of kidnapping activities continued to come in, someone called and told me about the kidnap of a man that lived very close to my family compound, a man we all know as an unassuming gentleman that went about his business in a very modest way. As if that was not enough, another man I know very well that even lived here in the United States but became a pastor when he returned to Nigeria, was taken away in front of his father’s compound. This was right after the funeral of his step mother. All these stories became compounded when the mother of Nigeria’s powerful finance minister, Dr Okonjo-Iweala, was also kidnapped. As I read and followed the story of the kidnap of the mother of the finance minister, I came to the conclusion that Nigeria had no answer to the problem. If people could be daring enough to take away the mother of the nation’s finance minister, in board daylight and in spite of the security she had around her, then no one was immune. The situation had degenerated to a case of every man to himself and God for us all. Inspite of it all, nothing would dissuade or deter me from going to give the final rights to a woman I loved so much and who gave so much to me. I was poised to travel and travel I did.

My departure was from JFK airport. I got to the airport more than 5 hours ahead of time and because I had already checked in and procured a boarding pass via the internet, my check in at the counter was a mere formality. It was swift and stress-free. After checking in, I lined up to go through security. The lines slowly inched towards the scanning arch. I watched as people took off their jackets, shoes, emptied their bags and other belongings into the bins. One lady, carrying her month old or so baby, had some form of liquid she said was for her child but was told to discard it. As all these unfolded, I remembered that fateful day on September 11, 2001, when the world changed. I recalled the loss of innocent lives and the many heroic deeds of those that marched back into the world trade center building to help people that were trapped but ended up losing their own lives. That reinforced my belief that whatever was needed to keep the skies safe and prevent the recurrence of that tragedy, must continue.

Nonetheless, my mind went back to the days when air travel used to be fun. When I first visited the United States in 1979, via Panam Air, I was dressed in my best, just like everyone else and looked forward to the flight. In this day and age, it is different. Because one has to literally defrock for security, there was really no need to dress up anymore. People now wear flip flops, shorts and casual clothes to make things easier and everyone is at alert, keeping an eye on the person next to you and wondering if that person is one of the bad guys. You are also constantly warned, through the public address system, to keep your luggage with you at all times. I patiently inched along and it did not take long before it was my turn to empty my stuff, remove my jacket and shoes etc. After going through security, I was left with yet more than three hours before my flight and had to find something to do to occupy my time.

I sat down in one of the restaurants, ate and watched passengers already in the Christmas mood, with all kinds of Christmas paraphernalia, going about their businesses. After what seemed like eternity, we boarded the airplane, a Boeing 747. I am always impressed by the orderly manner in which people do things here- no scrambling and no rush. The plane had a turbulent start but soon normalized and it turned into a very smooth flight from JFK to London Heathrow. I kept busy by watching some onboard entertainment movies like Sylvester Stallone’s – the Expendables. My son had given me an I-pad for Christmas and preloaded it with James Bond movies to watch during flight. I love Bond movies and was saving them for the second leg of the flight from London to Lagos. As I watched the onboard movies, I became oblivious of what was going on in the cabin and time passed fast. I later fell asleep and woke up to hear that we had begun the descent to Heathrow. I was glad.

Flying into and transiting from London Heathrow is not always a pleasant experience. You disembark from the aircraft, catch a tram to the general terminal, then go downstairs, get into a bus that drives you from terminal 7 to 5 or vice versa. I had placed my winter jacket into my box and so as we stood in line outside to board the bus from terminal 7 to 5, I was freezing cold. Anyhow, a minor inconvenience I would say.

The flight from London to Nigeria was uneventful and smooth. Again, I busied myself with watching the inflight movies, watching the James Bond movies on my I pad and sleeping a little. The pilot had a wonderful touchdown and soon we started disembarking. The flight landed at about 6:22PM- it was cloudy. Nigerians still have not broken the habit of rushing to stand and start opening the luggage compartment as soon as a plane lands inspite of instructions from the cabin crew that the plane still needs to taxi and come to a complete stop. It looks to me like a big case of “hurry and wait”. You stand up before the plane comes to a halt at your peril to get your hand luggage and dash out of the plane to the immigration hall where you now have to queue in a line for a while before you are cleared. Even if you are cleared immediately at the immigration, you then have to stand around the conveyor belt for more than 90 minutes to get your luggage. The scramble still does not make sense to me and simply make Nigerians look untamed and uncivilized and unable to follow simple instructions. Just for comparison, I did not see that scramble when we landed at Heathrow airport from New York. Everyone sat still, including a few people I later identified as going to Nigeria, until the plane came to a complete stop and the flight attendant announced that people could disembark. I have once written that Nigerians tend to obey the law when they are outside the country but as soon as they get into Nigeria, all bets are off. That would explain why a Nigerian in Manhattan would not drop trash on the streets of Manhattan but as soon as he or she gets to Lagos, it becomes trash dropping galore all over the place. We must begin to change that habit.

After getting off the airplane, a dark gangway soon gave way to the airport hallway. We were greeted in the hallway by a rich blast of cool air emanating from a series of air-conditioning units mounted alongside the wall. I was impressed. I took that as a foreboding of great things to come. Boy was I wrong. First, the escalator that was supposed to convey people from the upper floor down to a lower floor, the immigration cum baggage claim area, was not functional. So those that were already comfortably wheeling their hand luggage along the floor, had to pick them back up and start lugging them down the steps of the escalator. Then it hit me as I descended the last step onto the immigration lounge. The cool air conditioned air that initially greeted us, as we first walked into the hallway, had now given way to a stale, humid and warm air. To make matters worse, a long queue had formed at the bottom of the escalator stairs leading towards the immigration check counters. As the air temperature seemingly continued to rise, I gently removed my jacket while snaking towards the immigration officers. I was amazed that a premier airport that Nigeria’s political and privileged class use every time, still does not have a functional air-conditioning system. From where I stood, I could see some of the air-conditioning units mounted alongside the walls. Their green lights were on indicating that they were on but no one could feel their effect. I have said this before that it may just be a case of improper sizing of the units. Otherwise, why would the systems be on but not being felt. The mechanical engineer or engineers that designed the units did not seem to have considered that this is a hall that hundreds of passengers troop into at the same time. With everyone exhaling hot air, the room temperature was bound to be elevated and so the units must be sized to meet that challenge. This issue needs to be rectified.

I looked up over the spot where the immigration officers were. There were these banners with bold red letters that read, “Toyota welcomes you to Nigeria”. It was laughable that the banner was welcoming people to a lounge where they were being cooked by the warm air. I wondered if Toyota has ever considered that what they were doing with their banner was tantamount to endorsing a bad product. Passengers experiencing the heat would hardly feel welcome to Nigeria. Toyota should insist that whatever money they paid to hang the banners should be used to improve the condition of the immigration/arrival hall air-conditioning system. Now let me mention a little bit of good news- I noticed that the arrival hall was being expanded. May be when all this is done, a better air-conditioning system will replace the existing ones.

After going through immigration, I must mention that the gentlemen were professional and courteous, I walked down a series of steps onto the arrival cum baggage claim hall where people were already gathered around the conveyor belt. The place had become a cauldron of sorts, everyone was sweating, some were fanning themselves and others were dabbing beads of sweat dripping down their bodies. You could hardly see a smiling face, instead it was all anxious faces, looking on and waiting for bags that did not seem to be forth-coming. It dawned on me at this point, though, why some people may have rushed out of the aircraft. Procuring a baggage cart had a process that would have simplified things. You were supposed to go to a small booth to the right of the baggage claim, pay N150 to the lady inside the booth, get a receipt, walk over to the area where the carts were assembled, present your receipt and a cart would be released to you by the tenders. The problem is that the process did not work. When I got to the small booth to pay for a baggage cart, it was teaming with people and the lady inside kept saying that they had run out of carts. People may have rushed out of the plane when it landed just to get a leg up on getting baggage carts. They were probably familiar with the anomaly of carts being exhausted so they wanted to get there first and pick up the carts.

I could not help but wonder why they were experiencing shortage of carts. Authorities know how many people pass through that airport in a day, they should be able to provide enough carts to go around. I was appalled. The people around were angry and wondering aloud why Nigeria had chosen to look away from what obtains in other countries. Periodically and to add insult to injury, someone, obviously some staff or tout, would wangle his way to the front of the line and say something and a cart would suddenly appear and he would take it while the rest of us in the line waited. Then, as if to test the patience of the people waiting, the lady collecting money and issuing receipts announced that she had come to the end of her shift and would now leave. At first, we assumed she was joking but as she began to take off her apron and close the receipt book, it became clear that she was not joking and everyone started asking what she intended to do with the people already lined up. She said that her replacement was coming in a little while. Someone advised that the common wisdom was for her to wait until that person came and relieved her then she could leave. She simply said disinterestedly that she had been there since 6:35am and it was then about 8:00pm. Told to stay because of patriotism, she shot back that patriotism would not pay her bill because she is not paid well. The temerity with which she said that, to the hearing of everyone, underscored what is wrong in Nigeria. Customer service is alien because people are not properly motivated, treated and remunerated. Yet, the people at the helm rake in millions for basically impoverishing the nation. If Nigeria must have a workforce that love their job and would not mind going the extra mile for customer satisfaction, there should be more emphasis on the welfare and wellbeing of those, at the lower echelon of the workforce, who toil day in day out without much to show.

At that point, a man behind me announced, rather dramatically, that he was about to faint. The eyes of the lady in the booth widened. “Eh! Where you go fall if you faint? Abeg no faint here- o” It was a funny spectacle and everyone laughed heartily but I looked backwards and made eye contact with the young man. His pupils seemed more dilated than they should in a place with that level of luminosity. To add to that, beads of sweat were coming down his face. I was convinced that he was not kidding yet people in the line merely found what he said more amusing than serious. I wanted to tell him to go and take a seat for the time being, until the carts arrived, but I doubted that he would listen because inspite of what he said, he was still jockeying for a place in the line, shoving anyone that tried to displace him. Eventually, a man entered the hall pushing less than five carts stacked together. Of course that was quickly exhausted and we went back to waiting again. More carts were later brought in and I got one. I then went down to the baggage claim area and another round of waiting began. Passengers were all crowded around the conveyor belt in anxious anticipation. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I must emphasize again that it was still warm and humid. I kept wondering why there is hunger in the midst of plenty in Nigeria. Why would an oil rich country like Nigeria, where one person gets an oil block and rakes in $500 million that they do not know what to do with, have defective air-conditioning system in a place as important as the gateway to the nation? It had now been 2 hours since our flight landed and we were still waiting to get our baggage as they slowly trickled out one after another.

As soon as I got my bags, I placed them on my cart and wheeled them out towards folks I assume were customs gentlemen and women. They were lined up along the exit path like vultures shadowing a prey. Whenever they sighted a passenger coming out with many bags, they literally swooned on the person and began the “wetin’ you carry” routine ever so surreptitiously. One was already trying to flag me down when he saw, behind me, a man that was pushing a huge trolley with more than six suitcases. That guy became his new target and he literally waved me off and I went by without anyone saying a word to me. He probably felt he would get something more substantial from the guy with six bags than the guy with three. Outside, I was met by my family members and we departed the airport. I was impressed by the job that Governor Fashola has done in Lagos. The dirt that used to characterize the city was fast disappearing. Also, the endless posters that used to adorn the walls and all open spaces, in a very ugly way, seemed to have disappeared or minimized. Lagos has been renewed I thought. It was great to behold. At the Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way, along Sheraton and Prothea hotels, the street lights were all on and the darkness that used to invite hoodlums had given way to brightness. I was pleased. I later settled in for the night and slept peacefully. I was tired I assume. I woke up 8:30am and the sun was already shining into my eyes through a slit in the curtain.

Continued in part 2