Feeding egos will save you time: Nigeria diary 3
On countryside roads or routes in smaller villages in Nigeria, you can expect to be stopped by men in uniform unnecessarily and frequently. Sometimes these men are actual police officers or government officials, sometimes they’re just town vigilantes that have formed a group and wear a uniform; no matter who they are, these men are always armed. When you see these men waving you down in the middle of the road, their cars are parked alongside the road and random tree logs placed intentionally as a ridiculous obstacle course which forces you to stop. In every instance, our driver (we had one in Lagos and two different drivers in Port Harcourt & Uyo), would roll down the windows, greet the armed man, and the rest of us in the car would follow suit. We were a sea of “Good afternoon”, “Good afternoon, sir” etc. They would ask questions such as “Where are you headed”, “Who is in the car”, “Anything in the trunk”, and my family and I would stay quiet as our driver tried to appease the man with lighthearted jokes and banter in Pidgin English, the unofficial second language in Nigeria. Pumping the egos of these officers is a necessary task in order to try and expedite your checkpoint. Most of the time, the officer would wave us through, and another officer would move the huge log on the road so we could pass. However, the goal for these officers or vigilantes is always money. One wrong word, too little laughter or just because they felt like it, these men would not let you pass without paying them a couple hundred or thousands of Naira. Mind you, they don’t own the road or have any actual jurisdiction, but it doesn’t matter. They will force you to pay them, and they will hold you on the road for hours or escalate to violence if you refuse.
I’m convinced that because my mom and I were in the car, the officers felt less inclined to pressure our driver to pay him off as a sort of “respect” for the women in the car. In one instance, though, an officer just wasn’t having it with our driver. The man told everyone to get out of the car except for the driver and me, because I was in the very back seat. I frantically watched my family walk about 100 meters down the side of the road as our driver Dave slowly drove beside them. I asked Dave what was going on, where were they walking to, but he knew just about the same as me- nothing. After a couple of minutes, my family was allowed to get back into the car. I don’t know if Dave had to even pay the officer; the intimidation of forcing them to exit the car could’ve been enough to satiate the man’s power trip. Everyone in Nigeria always carries Naira on them because this sort of fleecing is constant. It’s not just checkpoints but in quite literally any situation where someone is supposed to be doing their job, their cooperation is often contingent on a bribe. It’s knitted in the fabric of Nigerian culture. It was one of the more frustrating and stupefying parts of the culture that we experienced, and confirmation that the corruption Nigeria is known for is at least partially true.
