Uzokwe's Searchlight


Douglas thought that his biggest headache was the fact that he had to travel through Europe and spend needless time in the airport there. He was therefore unprepared for the next shocker he was to face.
Monday, May 2, 2005



Alfred Obiora Uzokwe

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IN DESPERATE NEED OF A NATIONAL AIRLINE (PART 1)



ouglas is a hard-working Nigerian living in the United States. He was forced to take up a job as a nursing assistant in one of the hospices close to his apartment. This was after an exhaustive but fruitless search for work in his area of expertise. He hoped to save up some money and eventually bring his wife and their two young sons over to the United States. He was also looking forward to a time when he could bring over his aging parents for a visit. It would be an opportunity to get a doctor to attend to the nagging rheumatism that had debilitated his mother for a while, he felt.


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The slim-built and gap-toothed man had just returned from work three hours earlier and was now sound asleep on his sofa bed. Suddenly, the shrill sound of the telephone sliced through the silence of the night like a knife would an apple. At the third ring, he blearily raised his head and peered in the direction of the wall clock. The bright stream of light emitted by the incandescent ring of neon light, around the perimeter of the clock, temporarily blinded him. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. As his tired eyes began to get used to the ray of pink-colored light, the numbers on the clock became clearer. He noticed that the long hand of the clock lazily idled over the number ten while the short hand rested over the number two. Ten minutes to two in the morning. Who must be calling at this ungodly time of the night? He wondered. The phone was not letting up though. The ear-piercing sound propagated in every direction of the room, bouncing back towards him and in the process scuttling any attempt he was making to ignore the sound and get back to sleep.

Rubbing his eyes again, Douglas rolled out of bed and sauntered towards the phone. It was balanced on the stool next to the lamp stand. He grudgingly picked it up. "Hello", he crooned in a very raspy voice. There was an eerie silence at first, but then the near trembling voice of the man on the other line responded, "The unthinkable has happened", the man said. Douglas' heart missed a bit and then began to race at what seemed like a thousand miles per minute. He composed himself, or so he thought, and then asked, "Who is speaking and what happened? The emotionally laden voice responded, "Father is in the mortuary". The bones in his body seemingly began to crumble just as his knees began to cave in. Involuntarily, he sank onto the bare but carpeted floor and thus began an ordeal that would pose, to him, the greatest challenge he had ever encountered in his life. He had just been informed, by a close relative, of the unexpected demise of his father in Nigeria. The man also told him that his father would be buried in four weeks in accordance with the native tradition. The burial time frame did not leave him with much time to make any planning. He was certain of one thing though: he was going to be in Nigeria to pay his final respects to his father, a man he adored in life and would miss dearly.

The fog of the whole nightmare had not completely dissipated, in the morning, when Douglas decided to temporarily shed the grief that had engulfed him and start making some important decisions. First, he called his office and asked for some time off. With that out of the way, he directed his attention to the next important task - that of purchasing an air ticket for his travel. With tears still coming down his cheeks intermittently, he began to place calls to several airlines. He was trying to get the best deal there was for his proposed journey to Nigeria. By the time he went half way with the calls, he began to doubt whether he was going to be able to afford the airfare. The prices that he was getting from the airlines were very exorbitant. Some quoted airfares as high as three thousand dollars with the least price pegged at two thousand two hundred dollars!

By the end of the whole exercise, it was clear to Douglas that he could not afford the amount of money that the airlines were asking from him. He had already earmarked his next paycheck for funeral expenses and with very little money in the bank, the only option he now had was to fall back on his credit card, which thankfully had a limit of $4000. He was going to charge the ticket with his card and pay gradually when he returned from Nigeria.

Eventually, he settled with the airline that gave him the lowest fare of two thousand two hundred dollars. The lady on the other end of the line took his particulars and after punching them into the computer, she began to read his itinerary to him. "You will depart from your city on flight xyz and head to Chicago. There will be a three-hour layover in Chicago after which you will board another plane, flight 3323. The plane is an airbus and will take you into Europe the next day. Your final leg of the journey, to Nigeria, will begin four hours after you touch down in Europe and airbus flight 5721 will be your carrier"

As the lady rattled off Douglas' itinerary, he was bothered by the amount of layover time he had to spend in between flights, especially in Europe. At this point, he thought about the seeming equivocation of the Nigerian government in establishing a national carrier or at least commissioning an established airline to fly directly to the country. If Nigeria had her own airline, just like it had Nigeria airways in the 80s, why would he be flying around the world and spending an inordinate amount of time in Europe, just to get to Lagos? He could easily have boarded a direct flight from New York or Atlanta to Lagos, he thought. It was very unnerving for him but he had no choice.

Douglas thought that his biggest headache was the fact that he had to travel through Europe and spend needless time in the airport there. He was therefore unprepared for the next shocker he was to face. When he told the airline lady that he was going to pay with his credit card, the lady demurred and then said, "We cannot accept credit card. You will need to go to the closet travel agent or go to the airport and pay with cash or check". He was dumbfounded. He tried to protest but saw that it was leading to nowhere so he asked the lady for the name of the closest travel agent. He was asking for the information, knowing that he had no way of raising the amount of cash that was involved.

With the address of the travel agent in hand, it was time to decide how the cash for his fare would be raised. After ruminating the issue for a while, he decided not to swallow phlegm in the name of decorum and so he called some of his friends. In the end, they were able to rally some money with which he paid for his ticket. He continued to wonder why he could not use his credit card to buy his airfare just like he could do if he were traveling somewhere other than Nigeria. Why does the country seem cursed? He wondered. This would not be happening, he felt, if Nigeria had a national carrier of its own. An airline that would depart the United States via New York or Atlanta and head straight to Nigeria. Clearly, if Nigeria had a national carrier, most of the airlines that treat her citizens like dirt, knowing that they have no choice, will be compelled to compete for the business of her citizens. They would therefore be forced to treat Nigerian citizens with dignity. The above is reason enough for Nigeria, Douglas felt, to expedite action on the deal with Virgin Atlantic to provide direct flights to Nigeria from Overseas countries.

On the day of Douglas' departure, he drove the short distance to the local airport and then at check in, after reviewing his documents, the lady behind the counter went over his itinerary while looking over his passport. Suddenly, a worried expression enveloped her face. There is no transit visa on your passport", she said. "That's right", Douglas responded. "I am not stopping anywhere, I am going to Nigeria". "Your flight will stop over in Europe. You need a transit visa or the immigration officials over there will not let you into the airport." Douglas could not believe what he was hearing. When did this start?' he asked, half screaming at the woman. Obviously, the lady was unaware of the pain he was going through since learning of the sudden death of his father. Again, he re-iterated the fact that he was not stopping over the European city by choice and had no business there. "Sir", the woman said with emphasis, "the policy is that any passenger that will stop over in this European city needs a transit visa unless the passenger carries an American passport" "Even if the passenger is merely changing planes in the city and not setting foot on the soil?" He asked. "Yes", the woman said. At this point, Douglas had become sick of the run around he was getting all because his native home did not have a national carrier that could just fly him from one city in the United States to Lagos.

"What do I do now?" he asked the lady as he dabbed the tears that had involuntarily gathered in the corner of his eyes "I am afraid you will need to get a transit VISA". He began to explain his circumstance to the lady. She showed some sympathy but maintained that she could not flout the airline rule and that even if she let him go through, he would not be allowed to go through the European city. Slowly, he started removing his bags, which had already been loaded on the weigh scale. He placed them on a trolley and dejectedly started in the direction of the airport ground transportation. He was headed back to his apartment disappointed.

To be continued in part II - stay tuned