“God knows what ordinary Nigerians without my connections in Europe go through at the airport every day with Nigerian airline officials supposed to do a job, but abusing their jobs to make money off their passengers”.
A True Story From Murtala Muhammed Airport
BY KIO AMACHREE
I flew into Nigeria with my Labrador from Sweden. The dog came in its traveling cage. We came on Lufthansa.
A few days later I went to the airport to fly back with my dog, which was in the same cage.
The Lufthansa people at Lagos airport told me there was a problem with the cage.
I asked, what problem?
They said the cage was too small for a Labrador, as if he knew a damn thing about Labradors.
I told him it was good enough to fly into Nigeria with the Swedes and Germans having no problem, so what made him a specialist in dog cages?
He became angry.
He made me wait.
He refused to let me check in.
He kept looking at me, waiting, hoping, expecting the bribe. The dollars.
I asked him if he had ever heard of BOAC. He said no.
I told him it was the airline I used to fly in and out of Nigeria from the sixties on, until it became British Airways. Since 1961 I have been traveling and I have never been treated so badly.
Then check-in closed.
I missed my flight.
It was now past midnight.
I had to find my way back to Ikoyi with my dog, its cage, and my suitcases.
This happened the next day all because I refused to give them money.
I then contacted their office in Lagos. The manager, a Nigerian, was rude. We got into an argument. He showed no sympathy, no understanding.
The next thing I knew, an email arrived telling me, Kio Amachree, that I was no longer welcome on Lufthansa. That I was banned for life.
They picked the wrong man to insult.
The German station manager and the Nigerian second in command had reported me to Frankfurt as a danger to passengers, a security risk.
I contacted Frankfurt. The man who had written the letter banning me for life played big man with me. He refused to listen to a word I had to say.
I then went Mafia.
I found out through my connections that he was a gay man. I then got compromising photos of him sent to me. I went into his Facebook, dug up more dirt on the scumbag.
I sent everything to the head of Lufthansa. I sent the sex photos. I told him that I would damage Lufthansa if he did not sack the German manager or suspend him, but definitely sack the Nigerians at the airport and in their Victoria Island office, and remove the German station manager from Nigeria.
I was at war.
I was stuck in Nigeria paying hotel bills, unable to go home.
I was not a happy man.
The boss of bosses in Germany, saw how serious the case was. He saw that I was not some riffraff Nigerian. My Swedish passport helped as well.
Suddenly a huge financial offer was made.
Thousands of euros.
Not to take the case to court.
And I would not go to the press.
The German who wrote the letter banning me for life was removed from his job and sent elsewhere.
As for the Nigerian staff, one can only guess what happened to them, because they had not only cost head office in Germany thousands of euros in compensation, but they had gotten senior staff fired because of their corruption.
All I know is the next time I went to that Lufthansa desk, they treated me and my dog the way they were paid to treat their passengers.
But I had lost ten days of my time. God knows what ordinary Nigerians without my connections in Europe go through at the airport every day with Nigerian airline officials supposed to do a job, but abusing their jobs to make money off their passengers.
Nigeria is sick.
It really needs healing.
