By Dickson Omobola Imagine arriving at an airport with your backpack on, and your luggage in tow, without anyone trailing you and saying: “My chairman sir, you no go drop something?” Imagine pushing a trolley through the terminal without being approached by unsolicited helpers expecting a tip before they have even offered a service. Imagine making your way through the arrival hall without anyone stopping you to ask what you have to declare. Now, return to reality. Welcome to the Nigerian airport, where the ideal traveller’s experience remains just that. At most of the country’s airports, touting, begging and subtle forms of extortion are among the first experiences many passengers encounter. Despite repeated efforts by the authorities to change the situation, especially at the international terminals, these sharp practices persist, leaving even international visitors with an unfavourable first impression of Nigeria. Impression One such traveller was American travel vlogger, Tommy El Forastero, better known as Sabbatical Tommy, who complained bitterly about his experience of visiting Nigeria for the first time in 2021. Tommy, who lamented that personnel at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, MMIA, Lagos, demanded money at different points, told his more than 500,000 followers that MMIA was “extremely corrupt.” In a video posted on his YouTube channel, the travel blogger, who tours the world and shares his experiences with his followers, said his encounters with some individuals at the facility made him conclude: “I have been around the world and I have never seen anything like this. I mean, it is extremely corrupt. Picture corruption. The Nigerian airport, the Lagos airport, is that very definition of corruption that would pop up in a dictionary. Literally everywhere.” No change Four years later, many travellers say little has changed. About 16 months ago, specifically on the evening of March 26, 2025, this reporter visited the international wing of the MMA in Lagos to obtain the views of arriving passengers on their airport experience. Harassment and corruption topped the list of complaints. One of them, a fair-complexioned young man who declined to have his name published, had just arrived from the United Kingdom. As he walked towards the taxi park after exiting the terminal, this reporter approached him for his impressions of the airport. He said: “Honestly, my experience at the MMIA upon arrival is terrible. It is obviously poor. In fact, I just saw a man harassing a woman. The man was calling himself the woman’s boss, saying he could do anything to her and nothing would happen. There was no respect for the woman’s dignity. He acted as though there was no official channel to report the woman if she did anything wrong.” Another traveller, who gave his name simply as Chuwkunalu, said: “Some of the immigration staff are corrupt. They treat people differently based on class. I saw them giving white people preferential treatment while we stood in a long queue. All they want from you is money. They keep asking: ‘oga, wetin you bring come for us?’” Airline operator’s perspective Travellers are not alone in thinking this way. At the third edition of Naija7Wonders Conference, titled: ‘Detty December: The Lessons and Impact,’ acting Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Akwa Ibom state-owned airline, Ibom Air, George Uriesi, lamented that despite recent investment in airport infrastructure at MMIA, the experience is still disappointing. Speaking virtually at the event, he said although an airport ought to give an excellent first impression about a country, it is not the case in Nigeria. He said: “I am in a conference now, the Aircraft Financing Symposium. Everybody is talking about their airport experience coming into the country the last couple of days. Why is it like that? We should stop this. “We built a new terminal with all its flaws and we carried all the dirty behaviour from the old terminal into the new terminal. You have green and red, which is something to declare and nothing to declare. The nothing to declare is where they go and mount checkpoints. You can’t go through nothing to declare. You must declare something.” Bad image In June 2024, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, also acknowledged the problem after receiving complaints from prominent Nigerians. In a post he made on X, formerly Twitter, Keyamo stated that he had received several complaints about the “menace of begging and extortion at our international airports by a few unscrupulous persons who give all of us a bad image. “My phones are beeping every minute with messages about this from well-meaning Nigerians. Just to set the records straight, most of the agencies involved in this menace are not un
Don't miss out on breaking stories and in-depth articles.
