Togo No Go

Every now and then, there would be something to take one to Togo. It’s a nice country.

Every decade there would be a West African regional airline that very inadequately connects the disparate countries. In this decade, it’s Asky the Togolese airline. One would have thought that having Lome as their hub would make it easy to connect to Lome. As it is, there is one flight a day. If you had to spend a few hours in Lome on Wednesday morning, you’d need to head to the airport on Tuesday morning, and return to Lagos on Thursday afternoon.

Lome airport is tightly run. From the point of disembarking from the plane, till you’re facing immigration, you’d run into many sombre looking airport employees processing you through. Then you’d come to the big hall that every airport has where you scramble for elbow room to fill one of the mostly meaningless immigrations forms, as well as other meaningless forms. In Lome, this hall is big in proportion to the smallish airport that it is, but that’s superfluous to mention.

The last time around in Lome, I was part of a group of about 7 Nigerians arriving from asky. One arrived with the erroneous notion that being citizens of the West African regional union where there should be free passage of persons meant that immigration procedures were harmonised and one would have no need for Yellow Fever cards. The Togolese like their Yellow Cards (you’d have seen this from the exploits of Emmanuel Adebarndoor) and insisted on inspecting them. They couldn’t inspect what isn’t there to be inspected, but that did not change what was insisted upon.

I stepped in to negotiate a solution where the immigration personnel would escort me through to change some money into CFA Francs. I would then, under the terms of our petite entente, come back and furnish the group with spending power to bridge the vaccination gap. The Nigerians, as is their conditioning offered money. The Togolese would only accept the money in exchange for actual vaccination. It got heated but the Togolese won, the Nigerians got Yellow Cards, and Yellow Fever vaccinations, before being allowed into Togo. That was the last time.

This fateful Tuesday afternoon, with disembarking completed, I arrived in the Big Hall with my yellow card. Elbow room was at a premium but as a Fegosian, that is never a real difficulty. I passed the official, who feverishly inspected my Yellow Card and the Ebola form, and approached immigration. I presented my Blue Card, that had been named the West-African Travel Certificate perhaps as a tribute to Kafka the cheeky Czech. I would usually be traveling with my green passport, but the British had temporarily captured that as a penalty for requesting a visa to their country. Since I had to travel for work, I availed myself to what seemed like a solution.

This is West Africa. We have had regional integration including a full customs union for 40 years. The ECOWAS protocol informs on sites where it is presented that West Africans can travel freely within the ECOWAS region, required only to present their International Passports OR their ECOWAS Travel Certificate OR a piece of government-issued ID. My experience of driving through the Togolese border where people simply walk across had reinforced the knowledge that the ECOWAS protocol isn’t merely notional but actually operational.

The Togolese had signed this treaty but somehow the meaning of it was lost to the immigration staff I encountered. `I was told that my Blue Card was fake, and it was going to be confiscated. There was a short rant about the Nigerian government issuing fake documents but this merely converted my annoyance into confusion. I had obtained my Blue Card from the Passport Office in Ibadan. I had gone through the statutorily defined process, and paid the correct fee like an Omo Naijiria rere. What the fuck where these people talking about?

I remained cool and indicated that my Blue Card was in fact not only not fake, Nigerian immigration had stamped it as I exited the country. This merely converted their intransigence into annoyance and intransigence. I was summoned into the office of the chef, a room that had a little sign saying POLICE hanging above its entrance. “Bonjour chef, mon document est authentique. C’etait emis par l’autorité Nigeriane”. Chef wasn’t going to listen.

“Oi Chef, I have my National ID Card, how about that? You know what the ECOWAS protocol says about that”.

I was sent to the wooden bench airside. There I was to wait while they did the paperwork to send me back.

“You can’t confiscate my document, Chef. Failing to recognise a validly-issued Nigerian travel document should have consequences within the ECOWAS region”.

On arrival, my Etisalat line had mooched on to Moov, the Togolese network apparently owned by Etisalat. Only at that point did I realise that all my Etisalat promo minutes do not count for roaming. I really ought to by how have realised that the Telco incumbents would rather charge high prices than provide service! But that would be the subject of another article.

I could not make phone calls. I did a scan for free wifi networks knowing there would be none I could join. I was incommunicado. What was worse, the person who had invited me to this business meeting in Lome was in transit. There was to be a team at the airport carrying a banner that identified them as the people to take me to the hotel. It wasn’t looking like I would make it to the hotel.

After an hour, the paperwork was done. I was asked to follow this officer who took me through to the other side of immigration into a holding area.I was now in the custody of the police. I was put behind the counter while they figured out what to do. While I had lost my confusion, I sensed theirs had grown. It was clear that they simply were not sure what to do and why to do it.

My accompanying officer asked why I was in their custody. I explained to him and about 7 others, that I had arrived with a valid Nigerian document but Togolese immigration had chosen to hold the absurdly contrary view. They asked if I would remain at the airport till the morning. A quick glance around what I could see of the departure area indicated there was not going to be a lot of activity at the airport that night. Asky ferries people around, but not frequently from Togo.

I tried to project an air of calmness, as I inwardly speculated that the goal here was to make a stand for some cause before reason prevailed. My gut would have known that reason was not going to prevail but I am a person driven by the head, and not the gut.

I watched as the officers present did that weird salute police people in West Africa do where they place their hands beside their sides when facing an arriving or departing ‘superior’. “So no be only Naija police dey do dis nonsense”, I thought to myself. The superior officer gave a long, staggered and even leisurely speech rallying his men and two obese women. At his departure, the spirit of the corps was sufficiently raised, as they took to banter. In all this there was a realisation that the superior officer had not intervened in my ‘matter’. I watched all the people keenly. There was the French woman, a civilian I assume, who arrived in an SUV and went by without as much as a glance at the corps. There was the tall heavily built man in a dark suit who would have been a recruiting target for the Nigerian SSS. He had arrived with a curvaceous lady in tight-fitting clothes, who like him only muttered a greeting to the corps.

As a Naijaman, the sight of electricity meters above where I sat, prompted awareness that even though the ‘light’ had ‘blinked’ it had not gone off. I had been there a time long enough that, if this were Nigeria, they would have at least changed over from gen to whatever was the backup.

3 hours after arrival I was asked to come with my luggage into a Police vehicle which took me to the Gendarmerie. Along the way and at destination, the police officers made every effort to assure me that they had no problem with me. It was those crazy immigration people. We arrived at a compound with an armed sentry outside, who was being attended to by a woman who, in Nigeria, would have been selling kunu or paraga or something. The wall to the right of the gate was adorned with the kind of tree (note to research the name) that I have seen lining many a wall in Francophone Africa. The main entrance to my left was wide open, leading into a small hall. To the right of the entrance, in the hall there were two women, and three men sitting on a bench and chairs watching satellite TV. I was in awe that the Mexican telenovelas that entrance Nigerians were no less entrancing in French.

I found a bench with tacit prompting. The thing about benches is that they are hard and uncomfortable, which is the exact point of them. I knew I was being deported but it was still noteworthy that nobody had so much as said so to me. I found this intriguing but found no reason to ask them why.

The small hall has three desks. The Gendarmerie is on two floors, and appears to have been well built by the French not too long ago. It is in a shabby state, but you would imagine that Police stations would always be shabby. Even then, I noted that I couldn’t recall a police station in Nigeria that was less shabby.

Just before a number of officers finished their shift at 6, I was offered the possibility of staying in a hotel for the night. The condition was that an officer (and I imagine not a female one) would share the room with me. The suspicious part of my nature raised alarm bells, intimating my inner self that the problem was not only about having to share a bed with a male stranger, but also a possible set up scenario in some obscure hotel where responsibility could be denied. I mentioned that I already had a reservation at the nominally 4 star Hotel Sarakawa. They indicated that the Sarakawa is too far from their domain. In another setting I’d have asked what that had to do with anything but this time it seemed safe to leave it unsaid.

Impasse!

The officers switched their attention to watching the build up to the PSG-Chelsea game in the Champions League while I wondered if my text messages to the Mrs, my HQ colleagues and to my Lome-based friend had delivered. Most likely they had, but I could not receive SMSes or calls. One moment of inspiration saw me trying the credit borrowing thing that Etisalat offers. One *665 later, my phone had 1000 Naira credit to compliment all my existing Not-Valid-For-Roaming credit. I tried a call, and it went through. My friend in Lome had seen my SMS and he asked if I had been in touch with the international organisation that was hosting the meeting I had attended. I texted him the phone number and email of the inviting party, and turned my attention to calling the missus. No dice!

I sent update SMSes to my people, and cursed Etisalat and their robbing ways. I sent an SMS asking the better half to send 10,000 Naira credit. Since Etisalat short codes seemed to work, I tried all the bank recharge schemes that were available to me but none worked.

The officer who was assigned to custody me asked if I wanted food. I indicated that would be welcome as 7pm was a good time to have breakfast. I had no CFA. They consulted with the Chef of this place, and he allowed them to take me back to the airport to withdraw money. Dinner was rice and stew with chicken, and I was even allowed a bottle of Togolese beer.

On the way back, I learnt the French version of the bible verse “all things work together for good of those who love the lord”. The officer driving me back to the gendarmerie offered the verse as words of comfort, just a few minutes before passing a completely naked man walking past us. It was only as I wrote this that I wondered how much the mad man loves the lord.

My friend in Togo came to offer support. He brought calling privileges and communication was established with my known world. 10,000 Naira of credit even gave me access to 2G internet on my phone. While all this happened, I noted that somehow John Obi Mikel had managed a goal, but that had not been enough to prevent Chelsea’s loss. My delight in Chelsea’s loss didn’t temper my apprehension about the coming night.

My friend asked that I be released to him as he is a Nigerian Police Officer working for a known organisation and resident in Lome. He promised he wouldn’t compromise his standing. His appeal proved unconvincing to the otherwise quite cooperative and amicable Togolese corps.

The light did not blink all night. I took a long blink and slept more comfortably than I would have expected. I woke up, had a bath in the nicely done but deathly filthy bathroom, then put away my shirt which had done the job of a towel. Then I banged hard at my Macbook to start this article.

As the shift ended and the cohort departed, each one of them came to bid me goodbye. I joked to myself that I had become a symbol of resistance to Togolese imperial might.

At 9 am we went to the airport. I went through the ‘wrong’ direction into the big hall where the initial incident had occurred. They sent us back. Eventually, someone escorted me through. A boarding pass was presented. MY Blue Card that had been confiscated reappeared. One female officer escorted me onboard and handed my documents to crew. The crew handed the documents to ground crew in Lagos once we landed. The ground crew handed them to immigration. Nigerian immigration erupted in outrage.

And really that summarises it for me. It boils down to a question of whether Nigeria is a Mickey Mouse country, whose legally issued documents can be disregarded and its citizens humiliated. I will take it up through the office of the Senate President, through the Comptroller of Immigrations and through the Foreign Affairs ministry in Abuja.

On my non-existent life goals list, I can check off a new goal. I’ve been deported from a country.

And Adebayor is not even Togolese, granted that he’s Togo’s richest man.

PS. If you’re looking for a takeaway from this article, it’s that regional integration in West Africa is so logical in how beneficial it would be to all parties. Yet, it looks to be aeons away.