Lagos Diarist: Fixed
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The New Republic, June 5, 2000
Midway through bellview Airlines Flight 204 from Abuja to Lagos, Nigeria—shortly after a delightful in-flight lunch of warm fish-paste sandwiches—our pilot made the following announcement: “Now is speaking Captain Popovich. Weather outside plane is nice. Weather in Lagos also nice. Soon we land Murtala Muhammed Airport.” Captain Popovich was a Serb, and a Serb of few words. He was also, I would soon see, a Serb with bloodshot eyes, a three-day growth of beard, and a shirt held together by an inch of thread and a gallon of sweat. But neither his appearance nor his taciturnity could dampen my excitement as we approached what is possibly the worst airport in the world.
Millions of Americans who have never left the United States are familiar with Murtala Muhammed: until recently, the FAA required U.S. airports to post notices at all security checkpoints warning travelers that the airport was extremely unsafe. And, for a long time, it was: corruption was said to be universal—everyone from customs officers to desk agents was looking for shakedowns, and passengers risked being robbed outside, or even inside, the terminal.
Popovich brought us in low—disconcertingly low—over Lagos and wrestled his DC-9 to the ground. This was a moment of great joy, because our plane was by all appearances the oldest DC-9 in the world and, paradoxically, a virgin to mechanical inspection. Like most African airlines, Bellview—one of several private companies that have filled the gap left by the collapse of Nigeria’s state airline—flies what might be called “pre-owned” jets. And Bellview is actually one of Nigeria’s better airlines. Several years ago, in Monrovia, Liberia, I saw an airplane owned by ADC, another Nigerian carrier, crash a mile short of the runway. No one was killed, but a more recent ADC crash in Lagos killed everyone aboard. The feeling among people I talked to was that ADC was good at taking off but not so good at landing.
As the DC-9 touched ground, I looked out into the elephant grass that surrounded the runway. It is in the elephant grass that the notorious Murtala Muhammed luggage brigands were known to hide. They worked like this: As soon as a plane touched ground, the thieves would roll logs onto the runway, preventing the plane from reaching the terminal. Once the plane was trapped— it’s not easy to back up a jet airliner—the thieves would bum-rush the runway, jimmy open the baggage compartments, and disappear into the grass with as many suitcases as they could carry on their heads. An extraordinarily efficient system: At most really bad airports, bags aren’t stolen until they reach the terminal.
My landing at Murtala Muhammed was a disappointment, however. We arrived at the inconsequential domestic terminal, which is infused with none of the flavor or pathos of the international one (and which, by the way, no longer exists—it burned down the week after I left Lagos). Since I was traveling with a man of great influence in Nigeria, we were met by various fixers, whose sole job is to stand between the (usually white) passenger and the reality of the airport. At most airports in Africa, fixers are considered optional; at Murtala Muhammed, they are mandatory.
Mandatory, that is, according to everyone except Nigeria’s president. I had started my trip in Abuja, the Nigerian Brasilia—a new, entirely artificial capital whose airport is mostly empty and mostly efficient. (People in Islamabad, another artificial capital, joke that their city is ten minutes from Pakistan; Abuja’s relationship to Nigeria is much the same.) While there, I had breakfast with the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who scolded me for traveling through his airports with fixers. Only by experiencing Murtala Muhammed without them could I test his recent airport reforms.
I told him I accepted his challenge. On my departure from the country, I would make my way alone over the many hurdles between the curb at Murtala Muhammed and the (please, God) waiting British Airways 747 on the tarmac. But my Lagos hosts refused, so I was walked through the check-in process by a fixer.
It remains my belief, however, that I would have done fine alone. At the new and improved Murtala Muhammed, signs are posted everywhere demanding passenger and official alike not to “patronise touts” and to avoid “giving or receiving bribes.” At the check-in counter, people more or less stood in line- -something of a miracle for Nigerians, who are, in their demeanor and generally aggressive posture, the Israelis of Africa.
This is not to say Murtala Muhammed is likely to be mistaken for the Frankfurt airport: at least 150,000 people crowded the terminal, including many who could accurately be described as “touts.” And nothing in the airport actually worked: the main arrival and departure board did not list arrivals and departures. Instead, it repeated the letter “A” over and over and over again.
But by far the most important thing not working was the air-conditioning. Ordinarily, lack of air-conditioning is not Africa’s worst problem. People here put up with far worse—for instance, malaria, aids, famine, and death. But Lagos is pizza-oven hot, and the temperature inside the terminal approached 95 degrees, with a humidity rate of about 100 percent. It was so hot I found myself asking strangers, almost against my will, questions like ” Hot enough for ya?” which is one of those expressions, like “Have a good one,” that I refuse to use on principle.
But I wasn’t shaken down once, even after I finally ditched my fixer. In fact, by the standards of the continent, Murtala Muhammed started to look pretty good. After all, a few years ago I was shaken down seven times in seven minutes at the Lungi International Airport in Sierra Leone. My passport was seized by a Lungi police official, who held it overnight for “safekeeping. ” The next day, he charged me a $20 “holding fee” before giving it back. He charged this even after I told him Warren Christopher was my uncle.
No such problems at Murtala Muhammed. As we took off—on time—into the night sky, I noticed that the city below was almost completely dark. In this city of 10 or 12 or 14 million, virtually no one receives a steady supply of electricity. And these are citizens of one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world. Nigeria is one of the great failed states of the postcolonial era. But Obasanjo could become the best Nigerian leader in a generation, and he is confronting the corruption and violence that have crippled his country. He is moving slowly, but his reforms can already be seen at Murtala Muhammed. After all, what do new regimes inevitably do when they want to show they’re in charge? They seize the airport.