Overture

It’s been years since I applied for Visa, and this time I was doing it weeks before my departure. My shots came first. Then a friend advised not applying through the Nigerian Immigration Service website. He recommended a “protocol service agent” side door. That caught me off guard. What I thought were my rich travel experiences didn’t help much here. These stories set my imagination in motion and I packed way more than usual.

Nigeria turned out to be a repetition of one “Welcome to Nigeria” moment after another. 🇳🇬 Out of the many moments, one type of moment stood out and repeated over and over:

  1. Take any service, process, or system that can be improved by iteration. Ex: Flight check-in.
  2. The default state is broken due to perverse incentive mechanisms. Ineffectiveness is unacceptable but highly variable inefficiency is acceptable. Ex: Flight check-in takes 60 minutes.
  3. Users can “tip” individuals within the process to realign broken incentives and get the job done. The experience shifts from utter neglect and wasting the time of the user to getting the job done though the UX is still poor and inefficient. Ex: Check-in time drops to 40 minutes because of faster processing such as approved line cutting.
  4. Instead of services, processes, or systems becoming more efficient over time, steps are added to generate more tipping opportunities. Ex: A three step check-in process is now a five step process.

Goodbye Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA)

Soon the time to leave Lagos came. I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that leaving a country could be more complicated than entering because I didn’t have a protocol agent looking out for me.

I had a departure form I needed to fill. After checking in my baggage, a person from the flight counter waved me over. He snatched my form and began filling it. He filled it in with wrong information (I remember that he put in what he thought was the default nationality for someone with my complexion—Chinese) then asked me to tip for his services. Why would I pay for a wrong, not even a shitty, service I didn’t consent to in the first place?

I was reminded of something a friend had said earlier in the trip, “Nigerians don’t mean harm and aren’t trying to rip you off. They want to explore if there’s a monetary opportunity and if not, they’ll move on. Don’t take it personally.”

It was hard not to take it personally.

It was “Welcome to Nigeria” even till the very end.

Hello Incheon International Airport (ICN)

A couple hours later, I landed in Incheon and things just worked. It couldn’t have been more outlandish and the experience felt unreal. Here I was treading the land of K-Platonic forms. It took me a total of 10 minutes getting off of the plane to the baggage carousel.

This discrepancy between Incheon and Lagos wasn’t created by more or less automation. The difference was Korea had a working incentive mechanism that directed people to perform jobs and get expected results. Over time things would become efficient. Lagos didn’t and remained in disorder.

While I was standing at the carousel, an airport employee approached me. I was nervous and startled. What did she want from me? She wanted to know if my baggage had come out and was offering help in case it didn’t. I told her I haven’t seen it yet and she took me to the side to fill out a lost luggage form while other airport employees were looking for my bag. She’s helping me save time. Save time? Someone wants to help me to save time?

Tears welled up.

I was unaware I had my guard up the whole time during my stay in Nigeria. Nigeria didn’t make me feel safe and I was never sure where and when I could relax. I now also understood why I was exhausted every evening regardless of having gotten over jetlag and the number of activities that day. I was fighting Lagos.

Every moment I remained vigilant to not place myself in certain situations or get taken advantage of. Fortunately nothing too serious happened. When I came back some of my friends said “See I told you so. You shouldn’t have travelled there in the first place.” I wanted to view Nigeria(ns) and Africa(ns) as just another place, another people in the world without prejudice.

After a taste of reality, things are more tricky.