Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa by Howard W. French Read Free Book Online Page B

show my passport again anyway and merely kept walking. But the thin man stepped up his pace determinedly and approached David, warning him excitedly, “Do you know me?” and waving a wrinkled ID card. “Don’t you know that I am a police officer? You just wait. I will show you.”
    As the man sped off angrily, David laughed. “It is good Mr. Noble told you to have me meet you. It is always like this here. We Nigerian people, we are no good. We are always making trouble. Why?”
    As David put my things into the trunk of his Peugeot sedan, I saw the thin man approaching again. This time, though, he had two armed soldiers with him. David told me that no matter what happened I should let him do the talking. His car was slow to start, and before the engine could turn over, the men were upon us. This time the thin man stayed in the background, and while one soldier stood in front of the car with his rifle raised, the other came to my side of the car and demanded my passport.
    “Don’t give it to him, Mr. French,” David insisted. “They have no right. Don’t listen to them.”
    With that, the soldier became furious, and ran around to the driver’s side to threaten David. “Why did you tell the man not to obey me?” he asked angrily, raising his gun.
    To my amazement, David grew only bolder. “This man already had his passport checked inside. You people are just making trouble for nothing.” The soldier then demanded David’s papers, and he flashed an ID card, perhaps his driver’s license, but refused to hand it over. “Here is my business card,” he said, giving it to them. “If you need to see me, you can find me at work. I will wait for you there, but you will leave this man alone.”
    This made the soldiers only angrier. “Who is this American man to you?” one of them screamed. “Are you willing to die for him?”
    David began to start the engine again. It was no longer flooded and turned over smartly. “Stop your car, or I will shoot you,” the soldier in the front shouted.
    Then, as he put the car in gear, David said, more as a dare than a question, “Can you shoot me? Are you sure?”
    I wasn’t so sure, but throughout the whole tense standoff I had been a powerless spectator. The car sped off, forcing the soldier who had been standing in front of us to dive out of the way. I held my breath and waited for gunfire, but it never came.
    Welcome back to Nigeria, I thought, shaking my head in disbelief. David smiled as he drove toward the highway, and then delivered an important lesson in survival. “You must never fear those people,” he said. “If you do, you are finished.”
    David took me to the Sheraton Hotel in Ikeja, a hotel that was located more than ten miles from the center of Lagos but had the advantages of reliable power, decent telephones—by Lagos standards—and good security. When I checked in, a woman at the reception desk named Bunmi, who had known my predecessor, urged me to stay on the “executive floor.”
    I must have winced at the seeming extravagance, because she immediately pulled me aside to explain. “There are all kinds of people in this hotel, and the government is watching everybody,” she told me. “It is only a matter of time, but one day they will come looking for you. If you are on the executive floor, we can at least warn you without them knowing, and you may be lucky enough to escape arrest.”
    After the airport experience, I happily accepted the offer and tried to settle in. Like the grease that crackled and spit in the large aluminum bowls that market women used on street corners to deep-fry fish and yams, Nigeria was boiling. With union leaders openly challenging the government with calls for a nationwide strike to force Abacha to relinquish power and install Abiola in his rightful place, and with opposition figures having the run of Lagos and being quoted widely even in the more conservative press, there was a feeling that the country might once again be