Darkest Nigeria.

• Author: Baker, Robert

From USIA headquarters in Washington, I made official inspection trips to rate the officers at our African posts. One trip to Nigeria in 1982 was memorable.

Nigeria's Benin and Ife bronzes (12th-17th centuries) are among the world's greatest works of art. The estimated 150 million Nigerians are smart, brave, enduring, talented and hard working. They live under one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Some also are still deep into witchcraft despite being either Christian or Muslim. All those elements are noted below.

Nigeria's poor, the vast majority, show wonderful courage and ingenuity every day. Its elite are talented in business and the arts. However, the $20-$30 billion annual income from oil has gone largely to the pockets of corrupt military and civilian officials for decades.

Their corruption even hits the U.S. Embassy. I was met at Lagos airport by a U.S. Embassy car with the Political Officer. She whisked me through immigration and customs with the help of two Nigerian Embassy employees. I was stopped on the sidewalk just before I reached the Embassy car. A Nigerian Immigration Captain in uniform asked me for my passport. I called to the Political Officer who was already in the car. She got out and asked what the officer wanted. He smiled and said he had to check my passport. She replied that we had been through customs and immigration already, that I was an American official with a diplomatic passport and that she was the Political Officer of the U.S. Embassy.

He replied that he still needed me to accompany him back inside the airport to have my passport properly checked. She gave him an angry look and told the Embassy driver to use his car phone to call the Foreign Ministry and to ask for the Foreign Minister's office. At that, the immigration officer smiled politely, saluted, said he thought everything was in order and walked away. We jumped into the car and drove to the Embassy.

She told me guys like him shook down new arrivals inside the airport, even ordering them held in jail if they did not pay up. Welcome to Nigeria.

Later that week at the Ambassador's senior staff meeting the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), the number two guy in the U.S. Embassy, reported that we had been denied a building permit. The Embassy wanted to add a small radio shack on our property. The DCM had taken up the matter because the Nigerians refused the request by the General Services Officer. The DCM reported that he had called the Deputy...