Border Crossings

Well folks I'm back in Nigeria after a short, but ultimately fruitless trip to Benin Republic. More on that later. I've certainly returned a little bit poorer and slightly stressed, but I've got many stories to tell from the journey at the very least.

Last week I went to Lagos and got a shared car to Cotonou. Crossing the border that way was ok. Though just before the border, all the West Africans in the car, who supposedly don't even need visas to get through, got out of the car and the driver and I met them on the other side. The Nigerian immigration authorities asked me for no bribes at all, contrary to literary and popular opinion. It was actually those on the Benin side that did. One nice Nigerian paid mine for me though, and I got through.

The way back from Benin to Nigeria some days later was a different story.

First of all I had to pretend not to speak English OR French (ok pretending not to speak French wasn't that much of a stretch for me) to get past the Benin guys without paying a bribe. Then all 5 Nigerians at the border post asked me for a little money. But they were fairly nice about it, only asking once or twice each, and pacified with a gentle no. Incidentally I never figured out why I had to register with five people. I could think maybe one for passport, one for yellow fever, one for the actual stamp and one for drugs. But what was the other guy for? Anyways.

It was only after that that I got a full dose of Nigerian men in uniform. After the official stamps and border crossing I got in a car which was subsequently stopped around 30 times (no I am not exaggerating). It took hours to get past the customs, immigration, health, ordinary police, drugs squad, vetinary control (no I’m not joking about that one either) and various other uniformed or otherwise men putting up roadblocks.
They of course barely looked at the Africans in the car before demanding all sorts of documents of mine (the typical one-two combination was an immigration guy for my passport then 2 metres down the road a health guy wanting my yellow fever card). Then, subject to who it was, (drugs people were particularly meticulous) my bags were searched multiple times. But I pulled through ok. Since my documents were in order, only a fair bit of patience (i.e. no money) was needed to get me through all these people. However the hold up in Lagos traffic took almost just as much time so it was a tough journey all in all.