Nigeria Journal 2023 05 22: Collision
The security briefings for most places start with political unrest, religious extremism, and bandits. But usually at the end you hear the almost predictable “…but the biggest threat to your safety in this context are traffic accidents.”
Our workday is a pleasant 8am — 5pm with an hour lunch break from 1pm — 2pm. But the first Land Cruiser leaves the Guest House at 7:30 for the 5-minute drive to the office. I’m on that one to unlock the office and get settled in. We have a quick stand-up meeting at 8:00 and before that I like to print out my action items, do my wordle, and make a cup of tea. By 8:30 the vehicles are leaving the office on their way to the IDP camps.
This morning, just after the vehicles packed full of medical personnel depart, my fleet radio operator sticks her head in my office. “Joseph, one of our cars has been in an accident.” My mind immediately opens to a wide range of possibilities. At one end of the spectrum, a fender bender will be a major annoyance. Before I arrived a $20 Nokia flip phone was misplaced when one of our drivers was exchanging cars with the office in Abuja. In inordinate amount of time has been spent of “lessons learned” discussions and procedural reviews to figure out how that could possibly happen. At the other end of the spectrum, one of the Land Cruisers that my NGO operated in Haiti had a head on collision with motorbike. This happened a couple of years before I got there. People died. The police took the team to the police station and an angry crowd grew outside. Ultimately, they had to be extracted by a UN military unit in an armored personnel carrier.
The mix of every type of vehicle from motorbike to tuk-tuk to Land Cruiser to tractor trailer is a dangerous one. Different sizes and different speeds. The smaller ones have no safety features, and no one wears a helmet.
I don’t know if I verbalized “Is everybody OK?” or if she just read my face and hesitation. But she said “People are hurt, our other cars came back and are taking them to the hospital. It happened close by, at the end of our street. And it’s not just our team, other people involved in the accident are also injured. The PC is at the scene.” The PC is the Project Coordinator, the guy ultimately responsible for everything about our NGO at this location.
My mind is swirling with questions. What should I be doing at this moment? Rushing to the scene of the accident? Contacting our country headquarters in Abuja? Overseeing the scramble of vehicles going to the hospital? As I step out into the courtyard to gauge the temperature of the situation one of our vehicles, empty but for the driver, is coming back through the gate. It does a quick 3-point turn to position itself pointing back out. I look at the driver. He looks at me. Then he rolls down the window and shouts “The PC sent me to come get you!”. I guess that answers my question. I throw on my vest emblazoned with our NGO logos and jump in the passenger’s seat.
It is a relief to arrive at the accident and find a Toyota Camry, its front crumble zone made true to its name sitting besides our Land Cruiser and it’s bashed in rear quarter panel. I feared motor bike parts and blood stains.
But its not completely benign. The Camry’s windshield has been smashed by what must have been the driver’s head and he was taken unconscious to the hospital at the Air Force Base. Our Land Cruiser flipped on its side from the impact and was then side swiped across its roof by a tractor trailer on the highway. Pieces of the roof rack, antennas, and snorkel, along with broken glass and plastic are all over the place. We had 10 people in our vehicle, some weren’t wearing seat belts and along with a lot of bruises there might be a broken leg. The crowd that formed after the accident has already uprighted the Land Cruiser onto its wheels. They mill around animated and friendly retelling the story to passersby.
I talk to the PC, and my priority is to try to get our vehicle back to our office where we can get it repaired and back on the road. He is worried that if the police take custody, as is their normal procedure, we won’t get it back for a long time. Soon the police arrive, and the PC-Assist makes our case. The PC-Assist is a role for local a cultural expert — a kind of street savvy fixer who grew up here but also understands the nuances of our NGO’s rules goals. After a few phone calls they tell us their boss, the Police Chief, insists that we bring the vehicle to the station. The Camry is already being hooked up to a tow truck. Our mechanic gets the Land Cruiser started after replacing the battery, checking the timing belt, and finally banging on the starter motor with a wrench. He looks at me with a mischievous smile, “My Oga is going to the police station! You are going to get a real education about Nigeria! Not everyone is lucky enough to learn so much! Ha!”.
“Oga” means “boss”. It gets slung around a lot.
One of the policewomen rides in the damaged vehicle, presumably to make sure it doesn’t disappear. The other policewoman rides with me and the PC-Assist as we trail behind it driving very slowly. It’s not exactly road worthy. The turn signal and brake light are gone from the right side and the back wheel has a huge wobble. I am staring at it the entire ride. Willing it forward but expecting the wheel to pop off at any moment. Eventually we make it, and the gate swings open to reveal a yard covered with damaged cars.
We are told that the Chief is willing to hear our appeal to have our vehicle released, but first the policewomen need to talk to the driver of the Camry. They seem annoyed that he wasn’t available at the scene to be questioned. And they’re a bit incredulous, “You mean to tell us that he ran into you, and you still transported him to the hospital?” Yes, we explain, that’s kind of what we do. Then the senior officer says “You probably need to go to the hospital yourself to check on your staff, how about you give us a ride out there.” We step out for a huddle because we are straying into a gray area by giving rides to the police, it can be seen as a form of abnormal payment (a bribe) and we have strict ethical rules about making undocumented payments to government officials. We already had some concerns about them riding in our vehicles for the same reason. If they had been carrying guns it could never happen, but these are traffic accident cops, and they are not armed. In the interest of getting our vehicle back as soon as possible we get approval to drive them to the hospital. We grab a taxi and head off. Our game plan is clear; get the statement from the Camry driver, get in front of the Police Chief, take our vehicle back to the office.
Halfway there one of the policewomen gets a phone call. “Stop the car! There’s been another accident. We need to go to the scene. We will call you when we are free.” They jump out, wave down a couple of motorbike taxis, and head off in the other direction. The PC-Assist and I exchange glances… foiled.
Eventually they do call. It’s too late to do anything today, but we are invited to come back first thing in the morning.
The PC-Assist and I head over in the morning and get an audience with the 2 policewomen and their supervisor. He’s an older lean quiet man whose desk sits in front of the only window in the office. It’s a tiny office for 3 people and there are no lights. I’m not sure there is electricity, the air is still and everything is done with pen and paper. The policewomen are constantly fanning themselves. I can’t see what the supervisor looks like because he is completely backlit by that window and appears only as a silhouette.
After the introductions and greetings, the first thing they ask is “Where is your driver?”. “Um, didn’t know we needed him, I can get him over here right away.” “Of course, we need him, we need to take his written statement.” So, we wait and make small talk. I say “we”, but I say as little as possible. It’s the PC-Assist’s job to know how to navigate these situations and I don’t want to make his job any harder than it needs to be. As I sit and listen, the volume of the discussion rises. Soon the policewomen are yelling. Really yelling — like everyone in the building must be able to hear it, wild gesticulations, animated faces. I am doing my best to follow the discussion, but as it gets louder there seems to be more slang and hyperbole, twisted sentence structure and nonsensical (to my ear) interjections. It’s not clear to me if they are yelling at us, yelling at each other, or yelling in complaint about the Police Chief. It goes on and on. The gist of the conversation is simple. If they had gotten a statement from our driver yesterday morning, the Police Chief could have looked at it in the afternoon, and maybe already given us permission to retrieve our vehicle.
Our driver arrives and there shouldn’t be any drama. I had him write out a statement the day before and we discussed exactly what should be in it and what shouldn’t be in it. When we sit down in the cramped office a pattern of intimidation and demand, that will become familiar, starts. As soon as he sits down the junior policewoman tears into him, “Why weren’t you here this morning?” Again, it’s theatrics and yelling. “If your Oga” glancing at the PC-Assist, “and The White Man are here 20 times, you need to be here 20 times!”. She hands him the form for his statement. “I have to pay for this form from the regional office, it’s not free. Give me 1,000 Naira for the form.” It’s about 2 bucks equivalent. The PC-Assist objects, “We are happy to pay any required fees, but we need a description of the fee and a signed receipt.” The policewoman keeps yelling and waving her arms until The Silhouette pulls out his wallet and hands her some money.
As he is carefully writing his statement, we can hear some similar thing going on in another room down the hall. At first, I can’t make out what is being said, then I hear very clearly “Do I need to beat you? Because you have a mind like a woman! Do you want me to beat you?” I glance over at our thespian, and she gives me a dismissive wave that seems to implore “Pay no attention to what is happening in the other room.”
Every now and then she will yell something like “Include your registration number!” or “No paragraph!” unprompted. Then she pulls a billy club out of her desk and stands up. “You must sign and date it and attest that I did not coerce your confession for when we are sued in court!” as she raises the club over her head. Our driver looks wide-eyed at me and the PC-Assist and asks her if he can talk to us privately. In the hallway he asks, “Are we being sued for something?”, and we tell him “No, just write the statement about how you came to a stop at the intersection and the other car ran into the back of you. We don’t know what the hell she is talking about”.
When the statement is done, they tell us to come back at 3:00pm, or sooner if they call us so that we can have our audience with their Chief, the DPO, the District Police Officer. The Camry driver says he is still injured from the crash and is not ready to make his statement, but we’re pushing to get our vehicle, so the DPO will listen to our request. We get the call at 1:30pm and rush over. When we arrive, they ask us to wait under the tree in the courtyard.
At first we stand, thinking they will call us at any moment. We wait and wait. There are about 10 people sitting on plastic chairs or boards laid over old tires. People shuffle in and out through the gate, through the door of the Station, back under the tree. There’s a row of plastic chairs against the wall where the armed guard and a couple of better attired older men sit. They call to me, “It’s hot, the wait can be long, you should sit.” And so, I first go to a plastic chair near some kid, but I see that it is split and unstable. “That one’s broken, come sit here”. And I sit down with the old guys and the guard. As my driver and the PC-Assist walk over to one of the planks I realize I’ve just stepped into first class and left my colleagues on the other side of the curtain. After a while we go back into the Station to make sure they haven’t forgotten about us. When we come back out I grab the last spot on the plank. The PC-Assist cozies up next to me, “We appreciate the solidarity” he says cracking a smile. I’m back in economy.
Hunched forward on the plank I can feel the drops of sweat run down my chest. I wish I was wearing a shirt that didn’t change color so dramatically when it gets wet. At one point a guy walks up to one of the wrecks and puts his wallet on the hood. As he walks over to another part of the courtyard one of the older men goes through the wallet and pulls out a wad of cash and puts it in his pocket. After he sits back in this plastic chair the guy comes back to retrieve the empty wallet. To lean over to the PC-Assist, “A lot of money changing hands, huh?”. He nods and says “You can bet when we rolled in here with a Land Cruiser everybody in the building saw deep pockets and a chance to make some money.”
Once we are called in front of the DPO it is short and sweet. He asks about the health of our staff. He listens to our plea that we need the vehicle to resume full operations. He says it is clear that we are not at fault. He has one of the policewomen call the Camry driver to see if he objects to the Land Cruiser being released. He doesn’t. And the DPO passes judgement “Give them their keys”. Just like that we are back in the small office with the keys on the table in front of us.
“It is customary for 10,000 Naira to be paid for the release of the vehicle.” The junior officer leads off. The PC-Assist, insists “We cannot make undocumented payments to government officials.” “But you pay taxes she argues”. “Is it a tax then, what tax is it?” “It is not a tax” The Silhouette chimes in and she reluctantly hands over the keys. The driver and I take the keys and head towards the courtyard. At the main entrance the woman at the counter calls out “Excuse me, you need to sign the paperwork for the vehicle release”. I pull out a pen and she says “It will be 5,000 Naira. I stare at her in disbelief. I start to head back to grab the PC-Assist but he and The Silhouette are already approaching the counter. He whispers something to the counter lady and points to the door.
In the courtyard I suggest that we call our mechanic, he’ll drive the vehicle…. The PC-Assist interrupts me. “First thing we need to do is get the car through that gate and onto the street right now. If the rest of the people in there find out we’re leaving without paying a damn thing, I don’t know how they’ll react.” Out on the street standing next to the gimpy Land Cruiser we are giddy. We have escaped the maze of bureaucracy and petty corruption. “You should have heard the Supervisor in there” says the PC-Assist. “After you left, he said to the women “Do you think this man leaves his family, leaves his country — very secure, to comes to our insecure environment, puts himself at risk… because our government can’t do its job, he comes to help… do you think he is here making money and you should get some of it? You are embarrassing yourself, and you are embarrassing your country.””
Our mechanic arrives and slaps me on the back, “My Oga has had a hard day, he sweats so much!” Again, I’m wishing I was wearing a shirt that didn’t change color so dramatically when it gets wet.
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