One of the most poignant observations on the Nigerian condition is that reality is ever stranger than fiction. It reaches its most depressing apogee when the matter is not one of those things Nigerians are ever so willing to laugh off. Like when the conduct of the state places at risk the lives of citizens in matters where just a little thinking could make a difference. After a while you are not so sure what is the real problem; that thinking is alien to some who administer protocol, or that the state derives pleasure from trampling on the rights of citizens. My experience of last Wednesday is a classic example.

I was on my way to Abuja on one of the scheduled domestic flights. Ten miles from the Abuja airport, the Captain announced that we were going to hold for a while 20 miles from the airfield due to VIP movement. From the hissing through the aircraft you could tell that many aboard had experienced it before, perhaps many times before, and had come to be disgusted with the peculiarly Nigerian protocol of having aircraft hold to leave the air corridor open for so called VIPs who may be some ways away from the airport. Often this is a 15 to 30 minutes irritation that aggravates passenger who do not particularly like to fly and count every minute they are airborne. It probably also irritates airlines that burn more aviation fuel in the thin margin domestic industry where the cost of fuel is a critical factor.

Last Wednesday, we flew around Abuja for two hours before the Captain decided he could begin to run low on fuel and decided to return to Lagos. The nearly four hour flight to Abuja that ended where it commenced raised several questions. Forget the gentleman beside me that wondered why Heathrow and JFK in New York were never shut for VIP movement. Assuming that we are so contemptuous of our citizens and so intent on separating the big men who lord it over us as rulers, from the rest of us, it would seem that a little thinking could reduce the discomfort, aggravation and cost associated with this thing we call VIP movement.

Whichever Commonwealth VIP was coming into Abuja on Wednesday would have set off hours before. Control tower Abuja should have known when the VIP set out and the estimated time of arrival. It could then ask Lagos, Kano, etc, to prevent takeoff that would arrive Abuja close to that time. Assuming our two hour wait was not for one VIP who was still over Burkinabe airspace when we arrived Abuja, was it not possible to order the VIP arrival to find a few minutes break for several of the holding domestic flights to land before the next set of VIPs began to arrive.

Being around foreigners quite a bit, observing the knowing wink that condescendingly suggests "this is Nigeria, what do you expect; they don't think" I have come to be resentful of these cock-ups because I know these things that generate the sneering do not represent the way many of the Nigerian I know conduct themselves. Yet I really can not get angry at these foreigners because in not too long something that reinforces their contempt for us is likely to happen. I was therefore quite irritated at first by the continued holding pattern of the aircraft, then I got really upset. Suddenly, I began to laugh.

To be sure that Dr. Patrick Dele Cole who sat in front of me did not think I had lost it, I showed him the book I was reading. I had been putting off reading Robert Klitgaard's book Tropical Gangsters. One Man's Experience with Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa, until a few days before. In many ways experiencing this relic of colonial occupation, VIP movement, and such protocols designed to build a myth that protects a minority occupying force, was like inserting ones self, as the Harvard Development Economist Robert Klitgaard did in Equitorial Guinea. This former Harvard Economist who after Latin American and Asian experiences wanted to work on Africa ended up where he was cynically told was hell even by African standards.

I could not help but to compare Malabo, after Marcias Nguema was executed, with Abuja. Equatorial Guinea had gone from the highest percapita export earnings in this region at independence, to poverty that made it a hell hole just as Nigeria has stumbled from one progress to retrogression such that its economy has been described as a recursive economy, two steps forward, few steps backward. Attitudes, culture had to have plenty to do with it and protocols that make us the ultimately country of the 'big man' seem obvious contributors to a mindset of stagnation.

Just then one very bitter passenger asked if the system did not realize this abuse was a violation of his fundamental human rights, the right to freedom of movement and exposed him to undue danger. My wonder was how come they are so upset and never do something about it. I have not heard commercial pilots strike one day to stop this silly practice aimed at pulling rank but which one day could pull two hundred of our finest citizens to their graves. Sometimes you can not but feel that the worth of the Nigerian protocol and officialdom is somewhere between nothing and a little less than nothing.

People keep talking about a sovereign or not so sovereign national conference to ensure the shift of power across geographic zones. It seems to me however, that the more important issues for such a Conference is not so much what zone produces a President, zones have made no difference so far to the quality of leadership, but how Nigerians negotiate his rights relative to a state that has a high propensity to abuse those rights.

The Magna Carta may not be related directly to Heathrow not being closed down indefinitely when the next CHOGM takes place in London but its fruits will ensure that the discussion of real cost of such madness to the British people, were it to take place, would include the opportunity cost to all those travellers.


Professor Utomi is with the Lagos Business School, Pan African University