The Great Nigerian Roadtrip
This week, I took a road trip through some of the most beautiful parts of Nigeria. We wanted to set up some COVID19 testing centres up North and since there are no commercial flights, I was left with three options:
a. We lease our air ambulance plane. Could I use it for the trip? Of course, but it is busy doing actual air ambulance work. Taking it away from air ambulance work to take me on a trip seemed wasteful and unfair.
b. Ask a billionaire for his/her plane? I hate asking them for anything.
c. Go by road? Why not I thought? So off we went :-)
The great American road trip is symbolic, there are books written and movies made about these ‘once in a lifetime’, bucket list experiences. The first great American road trip was in 1903, made by a doctor and his dog.
CNN Travel calls the American road trip ‘a rite of passage, a combination of nostalgia, discovery and misadventure ideally set against a sweeping landscape and killer tunes’.
Hardly anyone talks about the ‘great Nigerian roadtrip’ probably because of time constraints, road conditions and security concerns. I have done several Nigerian roadtrips, Lagos-Abuja, Lagos-Akwa Ibom etc. But mostly at night. As I mapped out my journey, I actually felt quite excited as I would be driving thorough some of the most beautiful places in Nigeria and I love nature.
Anyone who knows me knows that there are two things I think about continually, economic growth/policy & development. In fact, I often say once you start thinking about economic growth, its hard to think about anything else.
Here are the some of the key challenges I was reminded of on this 24hr roadtrip.
1. Our road infrastructure sucks
There were some points on the trip were the ‘road’ as commonly defined, completely disappeared, the amount of maneuvering and defensive driving skill needed for a great Nigerian road trip is close to unbelievable.
This affects us in two main ways:
a. Economic growth and competitiveness: It costs over 50% more to move goods around Nigeria than it does America. To make things even worse, it also takes FOUR times as long.
b. Emergency Healthcare and Trauma
Due to a combination of poor roads and lack of access to tertiary care hospitals, you are more likely to die from a road traffic accident in Nigeria than almost anywhere else in the world.
It shows up in our air ambulance statistics are well.
2. Security is a bigger issue that you think
Our road trip road, traversed some of the most breath-taking scenery in Nigeria. At one point in Niger state, we saw a group of monkeys crossing the road together. Even though pictures were taken from inside a moving car, I cannot describe to you how intensely beautiful the Savannah across Niger, Zamfara and Kaduna State is. At one point, it felt like I was in a video game, because the colours seemed too intense and vivid to be real.
But these are also some of the most dangerous parts of Nigeria. At every checkpoint, when I was asked why I didn’t have an escort, I took my time to explain why it was important for Nigerian citizens to not use public resources like the police and other security services for private escorts.
I would explain that Nigeria isn’t actually drastically underpoliced by numbers. The generally accepted police to civilian ratio is 1:450 or approximately 222 police officers for every 100,000 people.
Nigeria has about 370,000 police officers, which is close enough to the UN recommendation, although lower than most countries. However, almost 20% of our police officers are attached to individuals. So on principle, I refuse any police escorts.
‘However, when your life is at risk, your principles go out of the window’- Dr Ola, 2020
As we approached Birnin Gwari, I was stopped by a vigilante who refused to let me go any further without an escort and our conversation went something like this.
Vigilante: Dr, I can’t let you go any further without an escort
Me: I don’t use escorts, the Nigerian police to citizen ratio is…, the rate of crime….the elite shouldn’t be using (my policy spiel goes on for five minutes, vigilante stares at me blankly)
Vigilante: You young people talk a lot, but you don’t listen. You didn’t ask how I knew you were a doctor.
Me: You guessed?
Vigilante: No, I knew. Because we work on information. So call who you need to call. Even here I cannot protect you if they come, but if you pass, I assure you, you will certainly be kidnapped because they need doctors right now to support their business
Upon realizing that it wasn’t even the ransom division of the kidnapping unit, but the human resources/talent management division that wanted me. I made the call.
The next hour was the longest hour of my life as we waited for the escort. I cried. I messaged my husband to tell him I loved him. When the escort finally arrived, I was so happy! As we pulled away, I thanked the vigilante guy for his warning, but he looked kind of sad. He explained to me that ‘the business’ needed support from people like me and that they (the kidnappers) would have been so excited to see someone like me, but ‘ah well’.
I learned from the escorts that this area was the most dangerous place in Nigeria outside Borno, controlled by not a few random ‘bandits’, but a sophisticated force of over 500 trained criminals that specialize in kidnap for ransom and operate during the day.
The town itself did not seem like the kind of town that was under siege, everyone seemed relatively affluent compared to the neighboring towns. But apparently, the kidnapping business is so lucrative in Nigeria, that you can implement a sophisticated CSR/social empowerment program.
Firstly, those 500 criminals need to eat, they need healthcare, they need clothes, they need labour for their camps, they need sexual services, all of these can be provided by the community.
Also, this particular group, work with volumes. With targets of 50 victims per week and average ransom amounts of N5m, revenues can exceed N1bn a month!
This excel sheet below gives an idea of possible expenses.
Kidnapping in Nigeria has extremely high margins. A lot of people I met referred to it as ‘the business’. The margins are over 90% and the kidnappers are living their best lives in one of the most beautiful forests in Nigeria.
3. There is only one Alhaji Aliko Dangote, any other is a counterfeit one
Throughout my journey there was only one constant. Dangote Group trucks delivering basic goods: rice, cement, sugar and flour. As well as the special trucks labelled ‘CACOVID; not for sale’ (CACOVID is a group of banks and other private sector companies that have raised money to support Nigeria during the COVID19 outbreak) delivering free food the poorest people across Nigeria to help shield them from the COVID-induced economic downturn.
4.. There are kids everywhere
In Nigeria, we are much, much, much more efficient at reproduction than we are at any form of industrial production. Each year more babies are born in Nigeria than in the entire continent of Europe.
Seeing children literally everywhere, riding on camels, playing in rivers, carrying farm implements, wandering around aimlessly, laughing, playing football, on their mothers backs, cemented my view that traditional education alone won’t work for Nigeria. It will be difficult to build schools fast enough.
We will need to take a more blended approach incorporating e-learning, education via radio, vocational training, mobile libraries and traditional learning if we want to stand a chance at being able to educate all of those children. Without education,our demographic dividend, becomes a demographic disaster.
5. We shouldn’t stereotype
Our similarities bring us to a common ground. Our differences allow us to be fascinated by each other.
-Tom Robbins
People from Southern Nigeria sometimes stereotype Northern culture as backward and disrespectful to women. I was careful to dress conservatively and speak a lot less assertively than usual.
And that’s why what happened in one particular meeting blew my mind. Disrespect is part of your lifestyle as a woman in Nigeria, for the most part. One act of disrespect that I have gotten used to over the years is being sent out of meetings or men saying ‘excuse us’ & they go off to a corner to discuss ‘serious business’. Its happened so many times especially with politicians that although I still resent it, I no longer find it offensive.
I attended a meeting with some politicians in Zamfara, one of the most conservative states in Nigeria with two male political aides. Of course, as our discussions got a little heated, I heard the customary ‘can you excuse us’. As I prepared to leave the room, the senior politician asked me to return. He was speaking to the men. He wanted to have the one on one with me.
Pleasantly surprised, I sat down, he addressed me as an equal, professional and we reached consensus. In all my days of doing business in the South of Nigeria, the place that is deemed to be more modern and forward-thinking, I had never experienced that.
Conclusion
The Niger-Kaduna-Katsina-Zamfara axis is so beautiful. I got to experience it by road for the first time in all its splendor.
The colors and the wildlife are absolutely breath-taking. I could literally visualise the high-tech farms, the golf courses, the ecolodges and the companies that could thrive there with the right amount of investment.
I will dedicate a proportion of funding from the Flying Doctors Investment Company to companies with operations in the North of Nigeria as I see such a dynamic business environment and so many possibilities.
A wise man once said that ‘Development is what happens in Asia. Africa is where development experts come to ply their trade’. Real development across Nigeria requires us to fix our infrastructure, find new ways to educate our young people, sort out our security and attract capital to build game changing companies. I really believe that with a decade or two of dedicated focus, Nigeria will get there.
But for now:
To Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna and Niger with love. Thanks for all the beautiful memories.
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