The Country That a President Never Gets to See
[Bush] " needs to be asked to pay to get something."
By MARC LACEY
The New York Times
July 16, 2003
LAGOS, Nigeria, July 13 - President Bush has come and gone,
but in the opinion of many Nigerians he was never really here.
He did Africa in five days, stopping at the requisite game park,
slave market, AIDS clinic and presidential villa. But he never had a bowl full of
isi ewu, a peppery Nigerian delicacy made of goat head that would
have left his taste buds numb.
Presidential trips overseas are always whirlwind affairs that leave
the leader with snapshots, but in Africa, so vast and varied a place,
capturing real life is especially difficult. But if everyday Nigerians
encountered along Mr. Bush's route had been in charge of the presidential
schedule, he might have come a lot closer.
Femi Kuti, the renowned Afrobeat musician, said he would
have staged a raucous party for Mr. Bush, with music that brought a message
about Nigeria's plight.
"He may be aware of the corruption and the poverty
but he won't see it," said Mr. Kuti, speaking just before Mr. Bush arrived. "He'll go from
the airport to the hotel. He'll be insulated. He won't go to the slums.
He won't see the suffering eye to eye."
Mr. Kuti, a voluble commentator on the country's struggles,
would have kept the president up late talking about how corruption drains so
much from a country and its people.
"I would sit down with Bush for two days straight
and I wouldn't stop talking," he said. "He'd either be crying when I was finished because
he'd be so sad. Or he'd be smiling because he didn't hear a word."
Other would-be tour guides took a more prosaic approach.
World leaders do not ordinarily spend time in gas lines, but that is just where
Franklin Okoye would have directed the president.
If he had, Mr. Okoye, a civil servant, pointed out, he would have been
forced to cancel all his talks with Nigeria's politicians, and scrap the
ceremonial functions as well. Instead, Mr. Bush would have sat
in his limousine all day long inching toward the pump, perhaps sticking his
head out into the choking smog from time to time to curse the
fact that an oil-lush country has too little gas to go around.
"This is the real Nigeria," fumed Mr. Okoye, who spent six
frustrating hours baking in his Honda Prelude recently as he sought to fill his
tank after the stations opened after an eight-day strike.
There was pandemonium as drivers tried to force their way, or buy their way, into
the front of the unruly queue.
Nigeria presents the best and worst that Africa has to offer.
The continent's most populous nation, it is a former military dictatorship that has
become a democracy, albeit a flawed one that sometimes barely seems to function.
As one of the world's great oil exporters, it is a rich place
that is often shockingly poor. It is nationalistic and yet deeply divided by
ethnic rivalries. Mr. Bush could see little of this from Abuja, the
shiny capital where politicians retreat to "run" the country.
In the decidedly grittier world most Nigerians inhabit, the
president would eat delicacies from the street, things like goat head and pounded
yam, and he would quench his thirst with water that did not come from a bottle,
or even a tap. If there was time, he might fetch that water
himself, balancing a plastic jug on his head, to get an idea of
how so many African women start their days.
He would also spend time out of the big cities, since most Africans live in rural areas.
He would be stopped at a checkpoint deep in the bush
by children with guns.
But not everything would be so grim. Some slum dwellers in this
sprawling city said they would give him palm wine and keep him out late at
a music joint. And he would have seen, after waking up from a night's sleep
on a straw mat laid out in the corner of some small hut, his arms
and legs covered with mosquito bites, that Africans are a hardy lot.
"Somebody like him doesn't understand sufficiently what we go through
every day," said a man who identified himself as Sheik Muhammad,
and who said he would gladly serve as Mr. Bush's tour guide,
especially since he has no job.
"I'd take him around to the neighborhoods around Lagos," he said.
"I'd tell him that these are real Nigerians. They wake up at cock crow and
work until sunset and they still barely make enough to live."
Back in the gas line, Mr. Bush would no doubt learn how
patient Africans need to be, and how shrewd.
Some cars might be ushered into the line right in front
of his limousine by a man acting as though he has the authority.
The man might be
a worker at the station or a con artist.
Regardless, he would be collecting money from line jumpers,
just one in a million Nigerian rackets.
"President Bush needs to see corruption while he's here,"
said a man who identified himself only as Dele, interviewed before the president's
visit. "He needs to be asked to pay to get something. Corruption is everywhere here,
and I fear he's going to leave without facing our biggest
problem."
Dele faced it as he waited in the gas line. Frustrated by the slow
pace of things, he reached into his wallet and pulled out a 200 naira bill -
the equivalent of about $1.50 and a day's wage for many Nigerians - and
handed it to a man with a handful of bills who then allowed Dele
into a faster-moving gas line.
"Yes, this is part of the problem," Dele acknowledged. "This is what
our life has become. Do you pay or do you not pay? You don't feel good
when you reach into your wallet. Bush needs to know the feeling."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
nytimes.com
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NOTE: The print version of newspaper shows two views of Nigeria. The one that Bush saw and
another for the everyday folks. |
