"WE WERE BRITISH TRAINED"


 
Although the border post had closed, we were allowed to bed down in the waiting area with the luggage we had salvaged so as to be ready when the post opened the next morning (Christmas Day).  Someone had left behind a copy of one of the national newspapers.  The main story was headlined in huge type:-

“CIVIL WAR?”

That was our welcome to Nigeria. In fact, the civil war did not break out for another six months.

The border post opened at eight o’clock on Christmas morning.  We presented ourselves and our passports to the short, stout, pompous police sergeant whose attitude towards us is probably best described as that of a younger Captain Mainwaring of “Dad’s Army”.  At first, everything seemed pleasant and it was not until he saw the three passports – one British, one Irish and one American – that matters started going down hill.

Carl and I did not need a visa to enter Nigeria but, as an American, Shelley did - and she didn’t have one.  But, the sergeant assured us, it was not a big problem because all she had to do before she crossed the border was to go to the Nigerian embassy in Niamey, the capital of Niger, get a Nigerian visa and she would be welcome to return and enter Nigeria.  Meanwhile, Carl and I could enter Nigeria and wait for her in Kano, 75 miles away.  We pointed out that Niamey was almost 600 miles away, Shelley had no way of getting there and it wasn’t a very good idea for a young white woman to be wandering alone around Africa.  It made no difference, the sergeant insisted she could not come into Nigeria without a visa.

Then I played our trump card.

“When we crossed from Algeria into Niger with a convoy of about twelve other people, most of us didn’t have visas but we reported to the first police post we came to and we all had visas in about two hours.” Surely, he could do the same for this lady.

To this day, I can remember the sight of the sergeant in his khaki uniform and his reply.  He pulled himself up to his full height of five foot six, puffed out his chest and, although we were taller than him, he managed to look down his nose at us as if we had something nasty on the soles of our boots:

“That may be all right for those people! They were French trained.  But we were British trained.  You ought to know better!"

He almost spat out the last sentence.
And he refused to budge from this position.  

The Kano to Lagos Express
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