Adapted from Chapter 8 of my book Chasing Black Unicorns, written while I was running Jovago in Nigeria.

Within a few months of launching the site, our booking results in Nigeria were good enough that we could think about opening offices in other countries. At the same time we had to keep visiting the hotels that earned us the most, in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Jos, Ilorin and Kano. With no rail connections and long, dangerous roads, the only option was to fly.

That meant putting my life at risk by using African airlines. Arik Air, which I was taking to Accra, was not on the European Union’s blacklist, but I was still afraid, especially in a country that had just seen Dana Air Flight 992 crash into a Lagos neighborhood. My imagination pictured a patched-up forty-year-old Boeing with stained seats and doors that would not close.

I did not know the plane was the least of my problems.

Standing in line, being overtaken

The drive to Murtala Muhammed International Airport took two and a half hours, short by Lagos standards. My driver was delighted to be getting three days off, while I joined a thirty-meter line.

At some point a man with an absolutely illegible badge approached me: “VIP pass? Fast track?”

“No,” I said, because I did not have one. He wanted to “help” me, which I did not understand at the time.

Lagos has one of the worst-organized airports in the world, and I suspect it is no accident. The more problems you have at an airport, the greater the chance you will lose patience and slip someone a few dollars to make it stop. I waited forty minutes, mostly because every minute I was overtaken by men with illegible white badges leading little flocks of passengers to the front. “Out of the way. VIP pass. Fast track.” I stood there with my mouth open, soaked in sweat and mad as hell.

Inside, the air conditioning was not working right at that moment, which is also the standard answer to why there is no Wi-Fi in Lagos hotels: it is there, just not working. Check-in cannot be done online in Lagos, not because it is technically impossible, but because it pays more to keep passengers frustrated.

Before I reached the desk, two uniformed officers asked me to open my bag in the middle of the departures hall.

“We’ll check that you are not taking any contraband out of Nigeria.”

The guard put his hand in and did not move it. “Maybe you have something for me?” he asked quietly, with a cheeky grin.

“I’ve said a prayer for you,” I said, which is the standard answer, giving him to understand that I had lived in Nigeria for a while and was not a complete sucker.

He grimaced, felt around, closed the case. “You’re a bit of a joker. I suggest that next time you buy a VIP pass.” Then he went off to harass the next traveler without one.

The ceiling on cash

There was also “a gentleman from the immigration department”, who was not the real immigration officer. He took the departure card I had filled out, sweating, and gave me a receipt. Nobody reads those forms. Since I learned that, I have been James Bond, Antonio Banderas, and once I granted myself the title of former president Goodluck Jonathan.

Then came the real immigration officer, who checked my passport, visa and vaccination certificate, as if I were entering Nigeria rather than leaving it. Twenty-five minutes later I was standing in front of him again. I had not known that you may not take more than $10,000 out of the country. I was going to Accra on business, expected some costs, and had twice that amount on me. I had been stupid enough to admit the full figure, afraid of a thorough search. Now I had ten thousand dollars I was not supposed to have, no bank at the airport, and no time for anyone to collect it before my flight.

Negotiating did not work, so I called a friend, the consul of a small, very wealthy European country. She knew what was going on with this VIP pass. She knew so much that I decided to buy one, once she had put me in touch with the right person.

It was the best investment I made after moving to Nigeria.

Meet Freddie

The right person was a man called Freddie, who stood out from the crowd. He wore a slightly extravagant but good-quality, tastefully tailored outfit: a blue blazer, red trousers, a pretty good imitation Rolex, manicured nails, and a perfect British accent. If you studied in the UK, you evidently have wealthy parents. If you have wealthy parents, nobody gives you trouble. You can frighten a white expat with revoking his visa, but nobody can take your passport.

Freddie also had the best price in the whole airport, “best” meaning the highest. Ten times what the men with the badges charged. My intuition told me he was in a league of his own.

“What’s the problem, Marek?” he asked, skipping the formalities.

“I have too much cash on me.”

“Who told you that?”

“The customs officer.”

“I’m sure he was joking. He’s known as a real joker.”

We walked together to the officer.

“Hi Josh,” Freddie said. “How’re you doing? My friend Marek here told me a really great joke. Supposedly you didn’t want to let him through because he had too much money on him.” Freddie burst out laughing so naturally that Nicolas Cage should take acting lessons from him. The officer laughed too.

“Of course. You said you have how much?”

“Twent…” I did not manage to finish. I ran out of breath, which is how I usually react when someone elbows me in the ribs.

“A thousand dollars,” Freddie said helpfully.

“Oh, that’s fine.”

I got the impression that with Freddie’s help I could have taken a live elephant out of Nigeria, tusks and all. I would have led it through on a leash. Freddie would have said it was an overgrown bulldog and everything would have been fine.

“VIP pass!” Freddie shouted as we plowed on. The suckers without Fast Track looked at me with utter contempt.

How the system works

Later I worked with Freddie many times. He sits at the top of the hierarchy of badge men, who call themselves “Protocol Officers”. The whole business works on the badge men paying off every airport official who has the power to make life difficult for passengers, usually settling up at the end of the day. Freddie is on first-name terms with the airport director. When Freddie speaks, nobody dares to protest.

He became something like a friend. Whenever I flew from Lagos, he was waiting at the entrance, and then he worked his magic.

Sergio Ramos in a wheelchair

Once I was a step from missing a flight to Dubai. I arrived at 8:30 for a 10:00 departure, which is impossible in Lagos, where I wait 45 minutes for French fries. I jumped out of the taxi, sweaty and mad, and saw Freddie waiting, not nervous at all, smiling broadly.

“Freddie, this is a very important meeting. If I mess this up, I’ll have to fire myself.”

“Relax. We have time. Sit down.”

Beside him stood a well-worn but still functioning wheelchair. I understood immediately.

“Here? Everyone will see.”

“So…?”

I sat down. One of Freddie’s assistants grabbed the bags and we headed off on a crazy race around the airport. The security check had already been “sorted out” (read: paid for) at the entrance. “Out of the way, sick person coming through!” Freddie shouted, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea.

After check-in he changed his spiel: “Out of the way. This man has lost his wife in an accident. He has to accompany the coffin.”

“I would like to offer you my sincere condolences,” the airline official said earnestly, handing me my boarding card. I put on a pained expression and nodded in appreciation.

“Jesus, can I have your autograph? I love Real Madrid!” shouted “the gentleman from immigration”, once Freddie had told him my name was Sergio Ramos, which I had confirmed on the departure card. “I hope your injury isn’t too serious.” The real immigration officer turned out to be Freddie’s cousin, who stamped the passport without looking at the first page.

Then a cursory check at pre-boarding, and I got out of the wheelchair. Freddie laughed and went on his way. The faces of the other passengers were priceless. For everything else, there is MasterCard.

The funniest part came later. I was flying Emirates, which has no staff of its own in Lagos and uses outsourcing, so one person often has several roles. The girl who had earnestly expressed sympathy for the loss of my wife now smiled at me and said, “Have a nice flight, Marek.” That was when I understood. It had all been a show. None of the airport staff believed I was accompanying a coffin, was paralyzed, or played for Real Madrid. Freddie had simply paid them all to pretend to be idiots. The only person completely taken in was me.

Without Freddie, in Accra

Six months later, in Ghana, I had only myself to blame. After a conference in Accra (which means an hour of talking business and a whole evening of closing deals), I ended up on the couch of some very nice Italians and woke up with half an hour to get to the airport. A girlfriend in Lagos had planned an evening for us, and if I missed the flight, I could be sure I would wish I had never been born.

I jumped into a taxi and shouted: “A hundred dollars if you get me to the airport in 15 minutes!” The old Toyota Camry could not go faster than 60 km/h. I said goodbye to my hundred dollars. It turned out later that my Italian friends lived five minutes from the airport. I could have asked them.

Check-in had closed, but the airline lady was still at her desk. At first she would not give me the time of day, but my personal charm won her over. Plus twenty dollars. She printed a boarding card. Meanwhile, as I found out later, she had phoned the gate, and her colleagues told her to get the card back. She had only $20 to share among five people. If I had given her a hundred, everything would have gone smoothly.

She snatched the card from my hands just before the security check. “Check-in is closed. You got this card illegally.”

“You gave it to me yourself.”

“Not at all. You took it from me.”

“How could I have taken it? You had to print it!”

She did not answer. She just ran off.

Don’t try this at any airport

At the gate, her colleagues held firm, and I had no dollars left. “If you don’t have a boarding card, you can’t pass.” Behind a glass door and a short flight of steps stood the bus, with my fellow passengers on board. The absurdity drove me around the bend.

And then I did something really stupid. Do not ever try this at any airport.

“Too bad. I’ll take the next flight,” I said sadly and walked away. The staff concluded that no “premium” was coming, and began to pack up. In the process they moved a little to one side. And what did Marek Zmysłowski do? He raced forward, swung around them, pushed through the glass door and ran down the steps toward the bus.

The bus had already left. I was ten seconds late. “YOLO,” I thought, and I ran toward the plane, where the steward had started to close the door.

“Wait! Wait! There’s still me!”

I saw everything in slow motion. The door stopped, then opened again. “Are you also flying with us?” the steward asked in amazement.

“Yes!” A wave of happiness rushed over me.

“No, stop!” said a voice behind me. Two guards, gasping from exhaustion, were very determined that I would not board. They took me to the air traffic control tower, which I actually enjoyed, since I had never been in one.

The supervisor called me “brother” all the time and seemed genuinely worried about my fate. When I explained, he had the check-in lady brought in, and the truth came out: she had been told to take the card back.

“I understand you, brother, I really do,” he said. “But you ran onto the runway, and that I can never forgive. The police will deal with you. I must also put your name on this airport’s blacklist. You will never use this airport again.”

Right. I had four more return flights to Accra planned for the following week.

Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve. Some time earlier, at a party, I had met a great guy, totally crazy in the positive sense, who turned out to be the sales director of a large African airline. I called him, explained, and he promised to call back and organize some help.

After a few minutes the supervisor’s phone rang. “Hello? Yes. Yes, he is here.” Then silence, while a torrent of words came out of the receiver. “Well, since you… that’s clear… undoubtedly we are dealing with a misunderstanding.”

He put down the receiver and looked at me with almost fatherly concern. “It seems the security camera has malfunctioned and did not record your alleged run. I declare you not guilty. You only have to sign a declaration that you have nothing against us. And you must pay a fee for transportation to the terminal.”

“How much?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Riiight… and how much does a trip to the ATM cost?”

They booked me on the evening flight, and I spent the day in the airport’s VIP lounge, sampling the local drinks.

The last explanation

I owe you one more explanation. You may think the sales director of the African airline called the supervisor and got me out of trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth. He called his own friend, a man well known for being able to sort out anything in Nigeria, who also had influence in Ghana.

Yes. That was Freddie. A man who had his own friend and counterpart in Ghana.

What I took from it

• When a system is built to make things hard, someone will sell you the way around it. At Lagos airport, the delays and the “VIP pass” were two halves of one business.
• Local connections are worth paying for. Freddie solved in minutes what I could not solve in hours.
• Never run onto the runway. I was saved by a phone call to a friend of a friend, not by being right.

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This is from Chapter 8, “VIP Pass”, of Chasing Black Unicorns. All of my income from the book goes to the MaYa Foundation.

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