Thursday, December 20, 2012
My Trip to Nigeria
Traffic, filth and insufficient services are what an American traveling to Nigeria would probably notice first, but what I would like to share with you about my trip to this fascinating country is its entrepreneurial spirit. You can look at entrepreneurialism in Nigeria in two ways. There are the people that steal electricity right off the power company lines. They live in what is considered the worst slum in the world, with over 4 million people living in a neighborhood. Think of the Bronx but with no vertical high rises. Fortunately I found the other traditional form of entrepreneurialism thriving in Nigeria, and here is my story.
So how did I end up in Nigeria?
I connected with Gbenga Sesan, founder of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN), about 3 years ago through an American-based social entrepreneurial organization called Ashoka. I was tasked to help him focus on running PIN, a non-profit social enterprise that connects Nigerian youth with ICT-enabled opportunities, like a for-profit business. I have been very encouraged by what I have seen him accomplish, but it was always through photos or stories from 9,000 miles away. Earlier this year Gbenga mentioned a program that PIN was planning along with a local university in Ile-Ife to help boost entrepreneurialism in Nigerian youth. They were planning a start-up contest like we have all the time in the US. He asked if I would be willing to join the panel as a potential investor. This was six months out, and I gave your typical New Yorker “maybe” which means “no way”. But to an aggressive, smart Nigerian like Gbenga all he heard was “YES”. He started all the plans as if I was coming and made everything happen. He dropped me emails every month with a countdown to which I would respond with questions about timing or safety concerns or logistics. Again, a New Yorker’s way of getting to NO, but to Gbengna that meant YES. The day after Thanksgiving, I set up a call with him with the intent to back out with the normal American excuses: holiday season, too many year-end closings, travel is too expensive, the US tells us not to go, etc. Maybe it was the bad phone service because every time I thought I was giving him a good excuse not to go, he heard YES. So by the end of the call, which was 2 weeks before the conference, I started searching for flights and working on the logistics.
Getting Ready
I headed straight to the Urgent Care facility around the corner and got all of my shots on the spot at 8:00 on a Monday night. I got inoculations for yellow fever, hep B and meningitis with 2 hours to spare to be eligible for a visa based on my date of departure. Then I put my resourceful assistant Thao to the task of getting my visa. She was back and forth from the Nigerian embassy every day for the next week. I didn’t realize it would be so difficult for an American to get permission to enter Nigeria. In the end, Thao succeeded and got my visa.
Meanwhile, it was not easy to get in and out of Lagos in a manner that would allow me to attend the whole conference, not spend too much extra time after the conference and leave money left over for bribes while in Nigeria. I spent hours searching flights. As I was making the plane reservations, I used the flight times and logistics to again try to get out of the trip, but Gbenga kept finding solutions. I finally found something that I could deal with. So in the end, I was in. Gbenga won. More about my flight options later.
I decided to pack a bunch of Clif Bars since I had no idea what the meal offerings would be. I finished packing at 1 a.m. the night before my flight and set my alarm for 5 a.m. to make my 8 a.m. flight. My daughter Becca was up before my alarm went off and kissed me good-bye while everyone else slept.
The Flight
I made it to London with no problems and boarded my flight for Lagos. I was one of 5 white people on a flight of 380. As a white man living in the US, it is very rare that I am the minority. It was quite an eye-opening experience to finally have the tables turned and see how it feels to look different from everyone else. The flight was filled with Nigerian college students headed home for break from studying in London. I was so excited when I landed and arrived in the Lagos Airport that I started snapping pictures on my phone right away. A police officer immediately asked me why I was taking pictures and demanded a bribe. I just kept walking and made it out without paying up. I was already fitting in. Gbegna met me as planned and we set out to explore Lagos.
Welcome to Lagos
My first point of advice I give to anyone thinking of a trip to Lagos is to take the flight that arrives at 6 am Sunday morning. I had a chance to tour the city while it was still sleeping, praying and relatively quiet for a few hours. There is not much quiet time in Lagos. It is usually chaotic, but those few hours on Sunday morning were a good ease-in for me. After about 11 am it started to get crazy. The traffic is chaos. There don’t seem to be any rules, and if there are they are not followed. I think in some cases people go through significantly more work to intentionally break rules. It is beyond reason and beyond explanation as to how this city is governed. This is where you see entrepreneurialism thrive.
Everything about Lagos is entrepreneurial. If you want electricity in your home, you get a generator. If you need a bathroom, you dig a hole. It is so far from being governed that it is up to the people to make it run. Religion is very significant here. Since the government won’t provide, hopefully God will. In the slum on the mainland part of Lagos, rent is $2,400 to $5,000 US/year paid 2 years up front. On the island portion of Lagos, the prosperous section, rent is about $24,000 US/year.
The Drive
The conference is about 70 miles outside the city, which is roughly the distance to the Hamptons from New York City. We allowed 3 hours to make this trek on the worst highway I have ever experienced in my life. It was like driving on a dirt road, and it was the only highway in the entire country. Everything has to come to Lagos through this road. Cargo trucks drive on it just like they are on the NJ turnpike with no traffic. People with baskets and pots balanced on their heads cross the street as if the cars and trucks are driving only 10 mph. Potholes the size of cars, burnt out cars on the sides of the road that have been picked at for every part possible and left to decay, an accident or broken down vehicle every 3 miles or so. Accidents on this road are not fender benders. They often mean death, as was the unfortunate case for one of the students who was planning to attend the PIN conference. He died from internal bleeding hours after the accident, something that we just don’t usually consider in the US. When you are in an accident in Nigeria, you call friends to take you to the hospital. There is no 911. His friends’ noble efforts weren’t enough in the unfortunate case of this young man.
Room and Board
I was given a hotel room in the university conference center. There was no internet and no air conditioning (and it was quite hot), and very loud music from a nearby church permeated the room. I decided to go to dinner with Gbegna and deal with my lodging situation later. Dinner was rice and chicken with a very peppery spicy sauce, which I didn’t touch for fear of getting sick from the unfamiliar spices and ingredients. After dinner, I found much more acceptable accommodations at the Camaroon Hotel, which was equivalent to a Best Western. But unfortunately, still no internet. After a long 2 days of travel and a welcomed second meal of plain rice, I got to bed at 2 a.m.
The Raid
Three and a half hours later at 5:30 a.m., I heard shouting in the hallway. It sounded like they were going door to door in some kind of raid. I quickly dressed, put on my sneakers and examined the exits for an escape plan. I was ready to jump out the window if they knocked on my door. I waited quietly. By 6 a.m. the noise stopped. I still have no explanation for the commotion, but I survived what was to be the only time I panicked during my trip. I headed down to breakfast to find the eggs covered in the same spicy sauce that was on my rice and chicken the night before. It took about 5 tries and the assistance of Tumi, a local businessman attending the conference that I had befriended, to fix my order and get me something plain. After breakfast, it only took me a few minutes to get ready for today’s events since there was no soap of any kind in my room. My pick-up time was scheduled for 8:45, but there really isn’t any such thing as a schedule here. My ride arrived by 10 a.m. and we were off to start the TENT Conference.
TENT Conference
TENT Conference
The speakers that came before me were speaking English, Nigeria’s national language, to the 200 guests. The theme was entrepreneurial spirit with a focus on the willingness to fail. It seems that in this African nation, failing is not celebrated but discouraged. The problem with trying to promote entrepreneurialism in this culture is that the underpinning of being an entrepreneur is to accept failure as part of your life. When it was my turn to speak, I focused on my business failures and the many investments I have made that failed. Failure is a part of business that needs to be celebrated and used as a learning tool. Many questions were asked at the Q and A session, and it was a great opportunity for me to see the entrepreneurial interests of these Nigerian youths.
Back to Lagos
Back to Lagos
After lunch, I grabbed a ride with Tumi to Lagos. Upon leaving the university, I realize that Monday is very different from Sunday. The streets are packed with people. They are everywhere. It is crazy. By 4 p.m. we arrived at the Lagos mainland and visited with Tumi’s mother-in-law. I was scheduled to get together with a fellow YPOer the following day, so I secured a room at the Federal Hotel across the street from his office. It was nice and quiet there with lots of security including guards with machine guns and physical barricades. The steak dinner was no better than any of the other meals I have had to date, and my shower the following morning in cold brown water was not refreshing. Upon checking out I told the staff how disappointing my stay was, and they just kept saying “Thank you.” The only plus was that I had excellent internet service.
The Highway Again
At 2 p.m. I realize that I must get back to the conference in Ile-Ife before traffic gridlock sets in. I got out of the city no problem. I was told that the ride to Ile-Ife should take no more than 2.5 hours, but it took 4 hours. I guess this can happen on the way home from the Hamptons any summer weekend too. However, everyone is driving in the proper lanes on the LIE, and no one is selling Christmas lights to people in cars at a standstill in traffic. It’s still beyond me why they sell Christmas lights when the power is out a majority of the time.
It was during this ride that I received a text from Gbenga with the news that one of the volunteers from the conference had died in a traffic accident on the same road I am travelling. It was a terribly tragic event that took Gbenga away from the rest of the conference. I quickly reviewed the advice I received at lunch that if we get into an accident I should run away so that I don’t get arrested or shaken down for a massive bribe. Fortunately we made it back to Ile-Ife unscathed and with all of my on-hand bribe cash still in my pockets.
I checked back into the Camaroon. Still no internet, but at least they gave me soap this time. I have dinner with Pinka who is a screen writer doing a movie about the life of TV writers, sounding much like “30 Rock” which she had never heard of before. The lights are going off every 20 to 30 minutes, but I am getting good at not paying attention to it anymore and remaining engrossed in the dinner conversation. Tonight they give me my kids’ favorite meal, pasta with butter, a plain dish that I welcomed whole-heartedly. I gave away the fish that accompanied it. We talked a lot about the American presidential elections. Many people I met watched the debates and were interested to hear what party I lean toward.
The Contest
The start-up contest was awe-inspiring. The ideas and thoughtfulness were on par with some start-ups I see pitched here in the US. The ideas ran from cyber crime solutions to tele-medicine initiatives to self-repairing devices to a set of artificial ears that deaf people can use to translate spoken words into text. The contest had 50 young people presenting ideas and solutions. The ideas were solving problems for Nigeria, as well as the rest of world.
My top picks: A medical records system stored on a SIM card, a transportation safety system to alert friends of problems, a few great mobile banking solutions and the voice-to-text conversion system for the deaf. I look forward to investing and hearing more about these young entrepreneurs in the future.
Heading Home
One of my favorite driving experiences was my trip back to the airport after the event. I left my hotel 7 hours before my flight for the airport. We were about 60 miles north of the city so needed extra time to navigate the only highway in Nigeria. Halfway to the airport we encounter traffic. So we do what everyone does in Nigeria when they hit traffic, cross the median (which is a steep pit) and then go the wrong way down the highway against traffic. We cruise down for about 3 miles and realize that the traffic is because of an accident in the north-bound lane that we are now on. It was a very bad accident - probably the most destruction of cars/trucks/buses that I have ever seen. So now we have to get back on our side of the highway. The reason that our side of the highway is stopped is because cars and trucks stopped on the northbound side came over to our side and slowed us down. The embankment is really steep and a few (not just one) trucks flipped over while making the lane change. Then a few other cars just sort of broke down while slowed down in the traffic. So with a lot of lane changes we make it around the accident after about an hour delay.
We get to within 5 miles of the airport (the equivalent of the Triboro heading to Laguardia) and everything stops again. This is now just the daily commuter traffic. 2.5 hours later the airport is within sight and I get out and run for the terminal to make it to my required check-in time.
It turns out my ticket was somehow “cancelled”, so I had to get in another line to get a ticket. I am all set to buy my ticket, but when I give him the credit card he says, “cash only”. I had to pay 157,000 nir, equivalent to $1,000 in American cash. I fortunately have $1,000 on hand for tips (otherwise known as bribes in the US). I give it to my host and ask him to get it converted to Nigerian nir. He runs and comes back with a bag of money. We hand the money to guy at the counter who is running the operation on 3 cells phones and a laptop computer that was linked to the public wifi, and ask for the ticket. He gives us the money back and says he is not allowed to take cash from customers. He calls his supervisor, who is nowhere to be found for about 15 minutes. Then he comes over and starts counting the 157,000 nir. He then takes the money and stuffs it in the big backpack he walks around with.
I get my ticket and go to security. Surprisingly it was easy to go through security even though I had just purchased a one-way ticket from Nigeria to New York City (flying through Istanbul) one hour before the flight, not checking any bags, and paying cash for the ticket. I made it to the plane on-time, which doesn't mean anything because it's Africa and nothing is on time. We leave an hour later, and I arrive safely home with everything intact.
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