Top 10 lessons learnt today in Nigeria.

1.Every building has barb wires and at least two security guards.

2.It’s common to have power failures and power surges every hour.

3.Because of the unreliable power supply, every building has a backup diesel electric generator.

4. Your hotel might be a good five minutes walk away from your office, but because of security, you will have to be chauffeured by a driver.

5. Because of the chaotic jams, the five minute distance walks takes half an hour by car.

6. Pot holes on roads in Nigeria are a dime a dozen.

7. Pot holes are far more efficient than speed bumps.

8. Caucasians are not well liked here. Only their money. (Which they believe is theirs anyway.)

9. After the English, the Chinese are the largest foreign community in Nigeria.

10. Put an Englishman and a Chinese in the streets, and the Englishman would most likely get shot first.

Nigeria: Day 1

As the plane touched down in Nigeria, a few things struck me. The city of Lagos is densely packed. From the plane, I can see buildings after buildings built closely to each other.

There were an unusually large proportion of Chinese. With Chinese, I mean people coming from the PRC. There was even a Chinese engineer who asked me to help him with the embarkation form, as he could not read/speak English. How he managed to travel surprises me.

The airport itself reflects Nigeria as a country. Chaotic. And quick scams to rip you off.

At the immigration, there were people that just walked in from the arrival gate to the immigration. They were escorts to pick up their guests, mainly the Chinese.

There was only one conveyor belt for the luggage claim. And there were no signs telling you which flight the luggage came from. There were a lot of Nigerians with boxes that are heavily wrapped in plastic. Some of them look suspiciously like gunny sacks. It made the place look more like a trading warehouse than an airport. There were a lot of people heavily wrapping their luggage in plastic cling films. I started to wonder if my checked in luggage is safe from the prying hands of the bag handlers at the airport. And I waited for an hour and a half before my bag finally came through.

To use a trolley, you will have to pay an equivalent of US$1.

In the airport carpark, trolleys are just dumped into the middle of the road, obstructing cars from going through. There are no lanes indicating which direction the traffic is going to. And horning each other is a norm.

Jay crossing across the highway

Jaycrossing across the highway is a norm. You can see street vendors hawking their goods along the road. And there are no road signs which indicate where you can overtake, white lines or double yellow lines. There are no one way streets. You just barge your way in.

There are a lot of policemen patrolling around. And they are armed with rifles.

I used to think that if you can survive driving in KL, you can survive driving anywhere.
I was wrong. Compared to the chaos here, KL drivers are like angels.

On my way to the office, I spotted the company KPMG. The building was surrounded by high walls, and topped up with barb wires. It even made Changi prison look less of a prison. As we progress through city, I realized that almost every self respecting building would have all these high walls and barb wires. To top it off, all of them would have security guards.

The next few days would be interesting.

Flight to Nigeria

“You are going to Nigeria?,” a colleague asked.
“Yes”, I said, shrugging my shoulders.
He burst out laughing. “Good luck, my friend”, he said, “better you than me”. And he shook my friend.

Later in the day, another colleague came by. “I heard you are going to Nigeria today,” she asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, my flight leaves at 3.25am”.

She, too, burst out laughing and shook my friend. “Take care, and I will pray for your safety,” she said.

So to horror land I flew.

Changi airport
At 3am, the flight there was full

The journey there was long, with flights connecting from Singapore to Dubai taking about 7 hours. Dubai must have been a very popular destination, as my flight was completely packed even for a 3.25 am flight.

Dubai Airport

At Dubai, waited for 3 hours before boarding to Lagos.