Five hours and fifteen minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa, touch down at the Lagos international airport.  Welcome to Nigeria!

The plane was still taxiing.  The seatbelt sign was still on.  Even the blind could see it.  The crew called attention to it.  But many passengers already stood up to collect their “carry on” luggage, not minding the danger in such reckless behavior, in a taxiing aircraft.  Welcome to Nigeria!

I was occupying an aisle seat.  The young woman sitting to my left asked me to get up so she could pick her luggage.  With the aircraft taxiing, and the aisle full of passengers in a hurry to collect their luggage, I asked her: “Where do you want me to stand?”  Welcome to Nigeria!

I expected her to be rude in responding.  But rudeness no longer disturbs me.  No one gets diminished when made into an object of insolence.  The one who is insolent, instead, gets diminished by way of self-infliction. 

“I am sorry, Sir.” she apologized.  A rare gesture, a pleasant supply where many mistake misconduct for gallantry.

The aircraft came to a standstill.  Seatbelt sign switched off.  We alighted from the aircraft, into the disgracefully dilapidated Lagos airport, once the pride of Africa, now a scandalous port of entry into the “giant of Africa”.  It’s an airport no one who is in charge of the aviation industry in Nigeria would want to be proud of.  But again, welcome to Nigeria!

Approaching the immigration desk, a beautiful electronic inscription in green light flashed.  “Welcome to Nigeria.”  That was the inscription. 

Home at last.  So I thought.  But, as soon as the inscription flashed the not-unexpected happened.  Darkness. 

Really, not unexpected.  I had only been away for one week.  Surely, nothing has changed in the country I so much love.  Even if I am not proud of her, I love her land, her climate, her sunshine, her hardworking and fun-loving people, her music, her cuisine in taste and variety.  I miss that cuisine anytime I step out of Nigeria.  Living without egusi soup and pounded yam, for just a few days, is a form of penance for me. 

But what does one make of her incessant power outage?  I live in Epe, Lagos State, a town Governor Sanwo-Olu once called London.  There we go without electricity for close to three months.  But, in our characteristic Nigerian resilience, life goes on.  And so do we.  But let us, for now, remain at the Lagos airport.

Moving in the dark, making sure we did not miss our steps, we approached the immigration desk to present our passports to confirm if indeed we were Nigerian citizens or citizens of other countries with authorization to step into Nigeria.  We could hear commotion. 

We could see a long but barely moving queue of passengers waiting for their passports to be checked, gigantesque but dormant air conditioners, their size suggesting it cost a fortune to procure them, people sweating profusely in an enclosure that gives one an idea of what it feels like queuing in an oven, rising tempers.  The state of the airport tells a parable about my country.  Welcome to Nigeria.

Verbal protests could be heard.  People on the queue suspected immigration officials slowed down its movement. They felt cheated that some passports were coming from behind, or from nowhere discernible, ferried to the immigration desk by some immigration officers.  Their verbal protests became loud, so loud that an immigration officer emerged.  He began to scold the people protesting.  Welcome to Nigeria where a civil servant can afford to display incivility, refuse to serve, and get away with it.

“Hello, Sir,” I intervened.  “You are a civil servant,” I said. “A servant should never shout on those he serves.  Don’t you ever shout on Nigerians.  They pay their taxes.  That is why you are paid.”   

There was silence.  Again, I expected him to be rude.  He was not.

Then emerged another immigration official, perhaps a senior one.  He chose to lecture the verbal protesters.  “Sir,” I said, “you need to put this area in order instead of scolding people whom your colleagues are scolding.”  I continued, “We are human beings, we are Nigerians, and you people are civil servants, paid to serve and required to be civil.  Don’t you ever shout on the Nigerians you are paid to serve.”

He looked at me and smiled.  When my passport was inspected, he checked it again before passing it on to another official.  For curious reasons, in this digital age, this is the only country I know of where two persons must inspect your passport at departure and at return. 

But the problem of visiting Nigeria does not begin at the immigration desk.  Once, flying to Lagos from a European airport, I noticed what some Nigerians called their carry-on luggage was the equivalent of their wardrobes.  One carried a carton of wine as his carry-on luggage.  A black airline official politely objected.  The Nigerian verbally abused him, calling him a slave.  “Your white slave master did not stop me.  But you are stopping me,” he said.

On another occasion, flying from New York to Lagos, I did not need to look at the monitor in Terminal Four of JFK Airport before knowing where to check in.  As soon as I stepped into the terminal, there was noise from one direction.  There were people shouting in Yoruba, Igbo, Esan and some other Nigerian languages.  Welcome to Nigeria, though in New York.

Our flight out of New York was delayed.  Instead of taking off at 12:30 pm, we took off at 1:30 am the following day.  I was in dire need of sleep.  But that need could not be met.  For, sitting on a row not far from mine was a woman who prayed, sang, spoke in tongues, conducting her one-woman-fellowship in English and in a Nigerian language.  Each time I thought she was getting exhausted, she gathered new strength.  Again, welcome to Nigeria where piety is worn as badge of honor.

On that occasion, I returned to Nigeria deprived of sleep, further deprived when, the following day, homes of some judges of the Supreme Court were ransacked by security operatives in the drama of fighting corruption through  means that are contra legem.  Welcome to Nigeria!

We and our leaders need to examine our individual and collective consciences.  If we want to be honest, we would admit that we are oftentimes aggressive, noisy and unruly in our behavior.  Many of us prefer chaos to order because they believe they can only thrive in chaos.   Ours can be a more habitable land.  Nigeria has all it takes to become a great nation.  All. Except moral and political will.  And it’s not just our leaders.  Despite sanctimonious ethnocentrism, many of us—north, south, east and west of Nigeria—are distant from innocence. 

I submit, having spent time in thirty-three of Nigeria’s thirty-six states, and the Federal Capital Territory, that our problem is not our different ethnic affiliation.  It’s a seemingly collective will to be uncivil manifest across the length and breadth of Nigeria among politicians and the people.    

Contrary to a cheap sanctimonious claim, it is not that Nigeria is a zoo while one Nigerian region is not.  We can, and we must change for the better.  Welcome to Nigeria!