The following is something I sent some months ago when everyone was unhappy with BA. Of course it never got published. What I said then is just as relevant now.....

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During the past two weeks or more I have been reading ad nauseum about the 'BA incident' and what I am reading sounds more and more pathetic. You Nigerians are all jumping on the ‘shared indignities’ bandwagon, without a full knowledge of the facts and with a lot of prejudice and self-pity, and you are beginning to sound like a rabble.

Why don’t you forget about all that for a moment and spare a thought for the gross indignities we 'Brits' and other expats suffer every time we have to negotiate Murtallah Muhammed Airport.

Most of us in the oil industry have 'protocol' staff who save us from the worst of these indignities (the work of 'protocol', in this context, being more or less a business of handing out bribes.) However, the last time I arrived at Murtallah Muhammed Airport I discovered, to my great dismay, that some new minister had recently banned expat protocol staff from the terminal building in an effort to ease congestion, meaning that for the first time I was going to have to 'run the gauntlet' alone.

As soon as I entered the baggage 'security check' area it was evident to me that the staff there had knowledge of the minister's new directive because they were praying on the expats with unusual rapacity. Describing the two security agents I had the misfortune to deal with as ‘unprofessional’ would do them too much honour: they were aggressive, presumptuous, offensive, rude, insulting pigs. They upturned everything in my bag as though they were going through a garbage dump, continually asking unnecessary and intrusive questions about every small item they found - when not single thing in my bag needed to be identified or justified. To be frank, I just wanted to tell them to fuck off and keep their hands off my stuff. That is precisely what they deserved.

Finally - predictably - they found something to take issue with: a carton of cigarettes. They took these out and wanted to confiscate them, saying it was illegal to take them out of the country. I told them it was not illegal. Their insistence that I would ‘not be getting on a plane’ unless I gave them the cigarettes was both sinister and threatening. But I refused. I even asked them to go and get a senior official to confirm whether or not I was carrying anything illegal, which of course they didn’t see fit to do because I wasn’t. So I stood my ground for several minutes and it was only the pressure of the waiting queue behind me (replete with fresh 'victims', of course) that finally persuaded these vultures to let me to pass - with my belongings intact, thank you God, but in complete disarray.

These two travesties of the security profession are, of course, scum - and Murtallah Mohammed Airport is full of them. But don't get me wrong, there is white scum as well as black scum and there is even British scum. The difference is that you won't find British scum systematically raping and pillaging the belongings of innocent passengers at Heathrow, Gatwick or any of our other airports: we try to put as many of them as possible in prison.

I remember a very revealing and entertaining BBC documentary series entitled 'Airport' that explored the workings of Murtallah Muhammed Airport – famous at that time for being the 'worst airport in the world'. As I recall, it finally took a healthy dose of British management and British expertise to teach the airport how to operate with at least a modicum of decency and dignity (not to mention efficiency). Now, it seems, everyone is falling back into their old ways!

As far as the ‘BA incident’ itself is concerned, I will say this. I have been flying all over the world for years and have no particular feelings for BA or any other airline: they are all much the same at the end of the day. Also, I think that airline staff are, for the most part, carefully-selected and well-trained to deal with ‘difficult’ passengers or incidents: they have to be. In the many years I have flown on planes with tough oil industry workers who, more often than not, board a plane tired and/or under the influence of alcohol, I still cannot recall a single incident that was remotely serious enough to delay a flight or require the removal of a passenger.

Although actually, now I think about it, that isn’t quite true. I can recall such an incident – just one. But this wasn’t on a long-haul flight full of drunken oil workers, it was on a local Virgin Nigeria flight to Accra – full mostly of what looked like ‘locals’.  And it left at 9 in the morning, so I don’t think we can blame this on alcohol.

The incident centred around one man – a ‘local man’ - and the big, heavy video camera he carried with him onto the plane. When he boarded, the cabin crew obviously assumed he was going to store this camera in an overhead luggage compartment, just as all the other passengers do with their luggage. But they were wrong. He wanted to hold the camera on his lap, for safe-keeping, throughout the flight. (For those of you who don’t know how things work on a plane, let me explain that this is obviously dangerous and therefore, strictly against the rules. It also begs the question why, if the camera was so valuable and so fragile, did the owner not even have a protective carrying case for it ?????? !!!!!!!!!

The cabin staff made repeated but fruitless efforts to persuade this passenger to put his camera in a locker but he flatly refused and the camera stayed on his lap. Continual refusal and continual arguing-back were the only strategies he could offer to resolve the situation. First, he argued very childishly that ‘all the other airlines’ let him carry the camera on his lap, so why wouldn’t Virgin Nigeria? This was obviously a blatant lie, because no airline – except perhaps a Nigerian one - would ever allow it. Then he demanded (naively and childishly) a written guarantee from Virgin Nigeria, on the spot, that they would pay for any damage his camera incurred. And so it went on…and on…and on.

Finally, the Virgin Nigeria captain announced over the speakers that he was holding the plane on the runway indefinitely. So an entire planeload of passengers was forced to sit and watch in complete disbelief, for some 40 minutes, as one pain-in-the-ass passenger was gently and patiently persuaded, by a highly professional and well-trained cabin crew, to accept their offer of a specially-emptied, specially-lined locker for his very special camera. It was just like being in a kindergarten!

Without attempting any deep psychoanalysis, what can we say about this incident and the man who caused it – apart from the fact that he was an embarrassment to humanity?

That he didn’t know the rules? Not knowing the rules is easily remedied, normally, with the appropriate instruction. But clearly, this man did know the rules. For some reason though, he preferred to play a perverse and confusing game with the rules, based on lies and deceipt, in order to get his own way. Besides, when the rules were formally explained to him – on repeated occasions - he flatly refused to accept them!

This is the behaviour of a dysfunctional misfit. He will always be in conflict with society and he will make very little contribution to society. He basically doesn’t know how to behave. He also has a diminished sense of social responsibility – not caring what damage or inconvenience he causes others in the pursuit of his own ends – as well as a diminished sense of personal responsibility – always looking for ways to place the responsibility for his problems on other people’s shoulders.

CONCLUSION: We will never know whether or not there were any people like this on board when the ‘BA incident’ occurred, but one has to admit it’s a possibility. Nigerians don’t have a reputation for stuff like this for no reason.

Finally, I read on Sunday 27th April that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, in its great wisdom, is now traducing British Airways with the additional ‘offences’ of  baggage delays, flight cancellations and overbooking - ‘among others’ - !!!!!.)

Come on Nigeria, GET REAL! Apart from having – still – the world’s worst airport you also have, arguably, the world’s worst airline industry. If Nigerians ran the world’s airlines, the entire world economy would probably grind to a slow and painful halt!

In making the ‘BA incident’ a focus for your ‘shared indignities’, you are once again making yourselves the laughing stock of the planet.

STAND UP - FIX YOUR OWN PROBLEMS - STOP BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE

(I hope you will print this in the interests of providing your readers with a ‘balanced view’.  I am a white Brit with a black Ghanaian wife and a mixed-race young son.  So, ‘rejoinders’ suggesting racist attitude should be kept to postcard-size please! Better to address what I am actually saying!)

Robot  # 1 | 08.05.2009 08:32

Why don’t you forget about all that for a moment and spare a thought for the gross indignities we 'Brits' and other expats suffer every time we have to negotiate Murtallah Muhammed Airport. ...Read the full article.

akuluouno  # 2 | 08.05.2009 09:03

Esteemed and Hon Villagers, The only way my parents taught be to gauge the truth in a matter is to measure the subject with a bitter meter:D I have put this article in the gadget and it tastes very bitter, meaning that it must be true:eek:

eire  # 3 | 08.05.2009 09:12

So Mogadishu and Kabul airports are better than Nigeria's? Why is Nigeria and Nigerians so easy to insult?

UncleTisha  # 4 | 08.05.2009 09:16

=Nick Clements;354302>...As soon as I entered the baggage 'security check' area it was evident to me that the staff there had knowledge of the minister's new directive because they were praying on the expats with unusual rapacity. Describing the two security agents I had the misfortune to deal with as ‘unprofessional’ would do them too much honour: they were aggressive, presumptuous, offensive, rude, insulting pigs. They upturned everything in my bag as though they were going through a garbage dump, continually asking unnecessary and intrusive questions about every small item they found - when not single thing in my bag needed to be identified or justified. To be frank, I just wanted to tell them to **** off and keep their hands off my stuff. That is precisely what they deserved.... Mr Clements, Would their attitude to you be as a result of some perception of an acute entitlement complex on your part? As for the other bits in your article, I don't think you are racist, in spite of your pre-emptive protestation. You are just crassly ignorant. Mxchew!!!!! :sick:

chaos.com  # 5 | 08.05.2009 09:17

Like every country we have our problems but we are working on it. rest assured it would be better. It was much worse before.

Balo  # 6 | 08.05.2009 09:30

If dealing with Nigeria is such an unpleasant experience for the writer, then why bother going there? Just stay in your country, right! Why he thinks expats deserve protocol officers to take them through the airports whilst other Nigerians have to deal with the same situation is beyond me but might perhaps be a reflection of the writer's unstable mind. He even goes further to tell us that he is married to a Ghanaian as though we are supposed to be impressed with that. Nigerians are well aware of our many short comings and I am sure there are many individuals fighting to get the system right but this does not mean we do not have a right to protest a glaring injustice such as that meted out to Mr Omotade when we see one.

Danmeka  # 7 | 08.05.2009 09:42

I no blame am, if our yeye leaders sit down for Abuja and plan to destroy our mandate just like as dem do Ekiti people. Egyptian Airlines and Nigeria Airways started at the same time, Egyptian Airlines still dey operational but our dear Nigeria Airways gone forever. Stop blaming other people, we are to blame, our democracy has become a laughing stock. Ghana and South Africa held elections no palavar, our dear country held re-run and supplementary elections in Ekiti State and it has became a K-leg issue. Is history about to repeat itself,till then

kalu31  # 8 | 08.05.2009 09:49

Nick is a racist, he wrote the article. that said let me move on. would the BA guys have thrown out the Nigerian if he had US passport? what if he had a UK Passport? would a Nigerian airline have acted and thrown the passenger out? we might not have the best airports in the world, but what is BA ranking amonghst airlines worldwide, have they finally sorted out Terminal 5? can you compare Aero Contrators to Ryan Air? But i lay no blame at the authors feet, rather on the Nigerians who allow mechanics come to Nigeria and call them Engineers, and even give them "Protocool officers" if he does not want pigs to touch his things, let him get out of the 'pig sty" and move back to sunny Middlesbrough Abacha treatment of BA was spot on.

Omo Ekun  # 9 | 08.05.2009 10:25

This what the man is saying; assumptions made on scanty information. You just assumed that since Afghanistan is a war-torn country then their airport must be worse than ours? Please get informed! This semi literacy we display and the assumption that we a blessing to the black race is doing us very little good especially when have nothing to show for it. Those that are disgracing this nation are not the 419 boys in diaspora, they are those that live within us in Nija coupled with the way we treat ourselves with total indignity back home. Can you honestly tell me that the treatment we get outside our country (either from policemen, traffic wardens et al) is worse than what you have experienced in hands o our own security officials. Charity begins at home!

RAHIM  # 10 | 08.05.2009 10:43

Reading the article, i actually agreed with most of the issues raised by the Author and did not read any racial undertones into until ''i am married to black ghanian''. That imho is just a case of defensive mechanism most racist and tribalistic people use saying ''my friends are black, white or somali''. That was an unneccesary bit of info. You can criticize constructively but trying to justify your arguement by saying your are not racist is not important .

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