By Olukorede Yishau
Your flight was 11.50pm. The airline advised that you should get to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos four hours earlier. But before you could be eligible to fly, a negative COVID-19 test result was compulsory so you woke up from a Ketu flat in the morning, headed for a sample collection centre, brandished evidence of payment for the test, filled necessary online forms and the samples were collected via your nose and your oesophagus.
You chose to get there two hours earlier than the airline advised. You and the colleague who dropped you found out that new construction work as a result of the attempt to link the old and the new terminals meant you could not drive straight to the terminal. Your colleague dropped you on the new bridge at the airport. He went to park his car while you navigated your way to somewhere close to the departure wing. He joined you some minutes later and you both joined a crawling crowd of travellers and well-wishers trying to get past security screening zone.
Airport officials stood at ease at the screening point sieving out passengers from well-wishers. You knew their tactics of doing this was to ask for passport and ticket so your colleague was armed with his passport and something that looked like a ticket. They let both of you in. No fewer than twenty minutes was wasted at this point. That done, you joined the crowd trying to check in. You were told to weigh your bags first. They were small and so fit the requirement. Your effort to carry the bag with the handle left it partially damaged and you gnashed your teeth as you joined another queue for physical examination of your bags.
As you got closer to the officers checking the bag, an official urged you to approach a counter with your luggage and she began a series of questions: Can I see your COVID-19 test result? Where are you going? What are you going there to do? Did you pack your bags yourself? Did anyone give you something to deliver? Between the time you packed your bags and your arrival at the airport, where were the bags? And more and more. You answered as truthfully as possible, including showing off that you were a frequent traveller who understood many of the things she was explaining. Off you went to the physical examination tables where you unlocked the bags for the officials to search. Unlike many others, you had no opkoroko, garri, dried fish and the likes in your luggage so you spent less time with the officer and, pronto, you joined the check in proper and within minutes, you had your boarding pass. By this time, it was already past 8pm, meaning two hours was gone.
You looked for your colleague who was watching a match his club ended up losing after a penalty shootout. You walked to a corner where an officer was asking if you had filled the Immigration yellow form and you replied that you were not ready to go through Immigration yet. You saw a bureau de change and asked your colleague to find out the exchange rate, it turned out they were using the black market rate to sell Personal Travel Allowance (PTA). Of course, you were not shocked because even the Central Bank was finding it difficult allocating foreign currency for travellers’ PTA. You later bought moimoi and chapman at a Mister Bigg’s. Your colleague was not interested in having anything. The match seemed to have taken over his life. You had your food and soon was in the mood to go past the Immigration point. Your colleague was not ready to go because he wanted to see the end of the match, which he was watching on his mobile phone. You joined him and soon his club lost.
You saw him off, wished him well and proceeded to the Immigration point. Nothing made you know you were going to be on the queue for about two hours, see many agitated over missing their flights, notice officials sneaking in people and witness a power blackout of about thirty seconds. You were so tired by the time you got in and some drug law enforcers called you for a round of questioning. That was after some officials at a screening point pleaded for ‘something’. As you were with the enforcers, you could hear arguments break out on the queue you had just escaped. It seemed blows might be exchanged. You were happy to have crossed the Red Sea. Many had blamed the Immigration officials for not being diligent enough with their work: Some were playing with their phones and others were just sharing gist amid tired legs and bodies seeking comfort. A lady was so tired she was looking for where to sit. At a point, you started resting on a rail used to partition the queuing point. So, it was a great relief to be on the side of the drug law enforcers.
The enforcers let you go after you revealed your identity. You walked into a duty free shop and walked to the corridor of the departure gates where you received a call from a friend and lamented your plight. You later walked into a KFC and bought fried rice and chicken which you washed down with Pepsi. You stayed back there for some minutes and found your way to the last point before you board the plane. Here, you were frisked, your hand luggage was searched amid grumbling from passengers who felt harassed by the over screening.
Soon you walked into the plane, located your seat, found no space in the locker for your bag and was advised to put it under the seat in front of you. Sleep was beginning to set in, you craved red or white wine to aid the sleep. You looked forward to a fantastic trip after the hassle of the last six hours. As your flight took off, you were convinced that travelling out of Nigeria can certainly be stress-free if Immigration officials do their jobs diligently, favouritism is banished and everything that contributes to time wasting is eliminated.
• Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author of’In The Name of Our Father’and’Vaults of Secrets’.