I've been offline for a while getting the new academic quarter on campus under way and decompressing after my three-week trip to Nigeria. International travel wears you down over time, and I am reaching that stage where every trip seems to take more and more out of me. Clear signs include a longer recovery time from jet lag (the nine hours difference between Pacific Coast US time and Nigerian time now takes me more than two weeks to readjust to, whereas in the past I was up and running in no more than four days), more backlog to take care of upon my return (and this a supreme irony, that the more professionally accomplished one becomes, the more work there is to do: so much for deadwooding after tenure), and more importantly, a greater sense of dissonance occasioned by the rapid mental shift from one system of operational protocols to another, between two social and economic systems as disparate as Nigeria and the USA. This last one is becoming much harder, since I am actually two different persons in both countries. Here in the USA, I am a scholar with a growing global reputation: in Nigeria, I am a very well-known person and national authority on cultural matters which means I am often in meetings with different individual and organizations whenever I am in the country. Because of these factors, I received very good national coverage of my book launch in print, TV and Internet media(see a recent publication from the
Punch newspapers).
As I wrote on this blog earlier, a Nigerian book launch (and any other Nigerian affair for that matter) is a peculiar occasion. Mine unfolded quite nicely and was very well organized by the Ben Enwonwu Foundation. Although we both grossly underestimated the turnout for the event, the much larger turnout was well managed within the small confines of the Goethe Institute’s Lagos headquarters in Victoria Island. Wall to wall coverage of the event began to appear in the national newspapers three weeks before the date and are still appearing. The audience was very much interested in the book for its analysis of Ben Enwonwu’s art and career: the artist is very well regarded in Nigeria and many reporters suggested that the book provides a template for future detailed analysis of modern and contemporary Nigerian artists. A lot of these articles, written in the peculiar Victorian English common to Nigerian journalism, contained worrisome misquotes and slightly off-kilter facts, which in themselves reflect an ongoing need for better craftsmanship among the journalists. In saying this, I do not mean to look a gift horse in the mouth or criticize the journalists who were kind enough to show up and interview me for the stories (in this they were very diligent: translating their interviews and composing selected quotes and citations into error-free reports seem to be the problem).
I have been reflecting on the aftermath of this event, mainly on the subject of distribution of my books in Nigeria, which has taken up all my time since I returned from Nigeria. Due to Delta Airlines’ luggage restriction on travel to Nigeria, I was unable to travel with enough books for the book launch. My publishers also requested I purchase every copy of my book intended for this launch (an expensive upfront cost that I ultimately had to assume) but carrying them to Nigeria became a problem, especially since I was carting back other books purchased for various important uses on this trip. In Summer, 2008, Delta Airlines imposed what I thought was an arbitrary restriction on luggage allowance to Nigeria during last year’s hike in oil prices. I was highly critical of this move at that time mainly because it seemed to unduly single out Lagos among a few other Caribbean countries (five or six in all) for these restrictions. Oil was trading at $147 a barrel at its height in summer 2008 but is now trading for $49 a barrel on this morning’s CNN quote, a price difference of $98 lower in favor of the airlines. Delta has so far not rescinded its restriction. Given that the Lagos route is a highly lucrative route, it seemed to me quite problematic that Delta’s restriction on luggage has not been reviewed or rescinded since then, especially since the price of air tickets on international travel doesn’t seem to have gone down along with the price of oil. Summer travel on Delta is pricing at $2300 for economy class seats and even at this high cost, they won’t let you carry additional luggage even if you offer to pay for it. In addition, the airline often forces Lagos-bound passengers to check their carry-on luggage in Atlanta, thus imposing what is in effect an additional fee of $80-150 on already expensive ticket costs.
I bring up this issue again to reaffirm an earlier focus on the inequities of access to international borders that afflicts African travelers (see my “
Borders and Access” series of postings in October and November 2007). International travel to Africa continues to be horrendous and difficult. In this case, I was struck with a double dose of difficulty getting my books to Nigeria by the restrictive luggage rules of Delta Airlines. I’ve flown this airline to Lagos on four previous trips from December 2007, this last trip in March being my fifth flight on the same route. I’m now investigating other options but none seems immediately viable. Travel to Lagos from the West Coast is quite onerous and the Delta route is, ironically, the most direct: the outbound flight gets you into Lagos-Nigeria from Los Angeles in 17 hours and inbound in 19 hours if you manage your Atlanta layover judiciously. Europe connections range from the tedious (British Airways runs 21 hours outbound and 26 inbound) to the ridiculous (Virgin Atlantic logs 27 hours outbound and 40 hours inbound for the longest layover times I’ve yet seen) while paradoxically billing one of the most expensive ticket prices. I had decided to stop flying through Europe because of their racist attitudes to African travelers and I am now reviewing the option of flying Ethiopian Airlines and other routes to Nigeria to offset Delta’s restrictions on luggage. Given how expensive it is to travel to Lagos in the first place, I think travelers should be able to take what they need for such trips within reason, especially if they are willing to pay for it. I have seen people fly horses and cars from the USA to Europe on the kinds of big jets that fly to Lagos (Boieng 747s and 767s; Airbus A340s, etc) and don’t see any reason why a Nigerian flying with two extra suitcases should be forced to dump their luggage at the airport just to make their flight. And I have observed this happen on both ends of the trip, at Los Angeles and Atlanta airports, and at Lagos. In a supposedly free market, you are really marginal if you aren’t allowed access to specific services even when you are able to pay for them. I have spoken to lots of Nigerians on the Lagos route, asking how they feel about these restrictions. They are often livid but almost immediately start blaming the Nigerian government for allowing its citizens to be treated in such a shabby manner. I agree that the Nigerian government has not done enough to protect its citizens on their international travel (let’s leave aside the oft repeated indictment of Nigeria for poor leadership and the demonization of Nigerians in the Western media) but I think this criticism misses the point. The transaction between Lagos passengers and Delta Airlines is an economic transaction and it is governed by well-established legal rules in the USA that forbid discrimination on racial or national grounds. Now, I’m not a lawyer but I think a case can me made that Delta and other airlines that fly to Africa from Europe engage in routine behavior that systematically discriminates against passengers on this route. Start with the fact that Delta flies exactly the same very old Boeing 767-300 –designated Delta 57 outbound—on the Atlanta to Lagos route and struggles to provide decent service on these flights (the old jet, bless its heart, flies quite well: the pilots are very good and the crew is decent). Add the arbitrary luggage restriction and traveler complaints of really bad treatment of Nigerians by foreign airlines over the past year alone and you could conceivably put together a good class action lawsuit. It falls to Lagos passengers to defend their rights under the existing legal rules that govern this process of economic transaction but I don’t expect to see this kind of proactive passenger reaction anytime soon. Legal costs in the USA are very expensive and favors corporations over individuals. Also, Nigerians (and black peoples in general) are very good at working against their own interests. More than anything, I think this is what ensures the persistence of a black underclass status in the global economy for a long time to come, and dear reader, you can quote me on this.
To return to the topic at hand: while Delta frustrated my effort to get enough books to Lagos for the book launch, things proved similarly difficult with my publishers. Let me state upfront that I think my publishers did a fantastic job with publishing the book and distributing it out here in the Western world. All commentators point out that the book is very well produced—it is in fact a beautiful book; it is also well represented on Amazon.com and on the University of Rochester Press’s online catalog. One can order the book from both places. The problem is that Amazon.com does not honor orders from Nigeria or if they do, it takes 12 weeks to ship the product to Lagos. I may be wrong here but I haven’t yet met anyone in Lagos who successfully placed an order on Amazon.com. I know that most online stores automatically reject credit cards issued in Nigeria or credit card orders originating from Nigeria, and often reject orders placed for delivery to Nigeria even when you pay for them with credit cards issued elsewhere (the usual claim is that concern about fraud but overall, credit card fraud originating in the USA is more than 1000% higher than that from all of Africa combined. As any cursory internet search will tell you, the most sophisticated credit card fraud rings are run out of Europe). This means that even those prospective buyers in Nigeria who wanted to purchase my book online couldn’t do so. At the launch, I was besieged by people who wanted to buy the book (at the last count, the purchase list contains over 120 orders) and I had to explain to them that copies of the book were simply not yet available for sale in Nigeria. I had tried to arrange orders to ship copies of the book to Lagos since January but was unable to do so because the cost of shipping more often doubles the cost of the books themselves. Express shipping by international courier is simply out of the question. I mailed a FEDEX package to Lagos last week containing 18 sheets of paper, letters sent to invite several people for the upcoming
Nollywood Foundation Convention in Los Angeles in June 2009: it cost me $107 to send the package for delivery in ten days. Consider relative to this cost, what it will cost to send 60 pounds worth of hardcover books in the same time.The price is considerably less to ship by sea but that takes from anywhere from 12-18 weeks for delivery. As at this posting, I am still frantically trying to get additional copies of my book shipped to Lagos so that they can be distributed in Nigeria. My publishers have been very cooperative in this process but our combined efforts have only recently identified a possible economically viable means to accomplish this goal. I give my publishers a lot of credit in that regard, since they also are interested in selling as many copies of the book as possible, but I've had to ask the hard question of whether they had any plans at all for selling my books in Nigeria, given that ordering through the usual channels is not really an option in that context.
It is thus apparent that there is a real and significant economic cost associated with living in a country like Nigeria, which is an added cost not often factored into economic estimates involving the country. This is part of what I’ve defined earlier on this blog as “
poverty market” economics which actually penalizes Africans for living in Africa and African Diaspora peoples for living in ghettos in the West. That this issue equally affects academics is not often taken into consideration in analysis of how knowledge about Africa is produced and consumed. My experiences as an international scholar reveal to me that African knowledge has become another raw material produced in Africa, processed or refined in the West and resold to Africans at exorbitant costs if they are allowed to buy it at all. We are used to speaking of natural resources in this manner including oil and gas (the Nigerian government is even now trying to build a pipeline to Europe from the Niger Delta even though it hasn’t curbed the enormous gas flaring that has scorched that accursed environment since Shell first struck oil at Oloibiri in the 1950s!!!), cocoa, gold, diamonds, and many other items. For most of my professional career, I have been a harsh critic of this unequal access but it is only in the past few years that I have started to engage it as a quantifiable phenomena. What I have found is shocking beyond belief, but even more shocking is the fact that its impact on most aspects of African life is not yet properly taken into consideration in our analysis of the causes of African underdevelopment, which continue to subscribe to pseudo-scientific theories of voodoo economics that actively support Western appropriation of African resources. The biggest issue is how this situation undermines our traditional understanding of economics, that given adequate demand for a commodity, supply always rises to meet demand. This is not always the case where African demand for products and services are concerned and its impact is often insidious but very real.
There is a lot more to say about these issues as time goes by. And so, as the Bard said, once more into the breach, dear friends…
Aluta ContinuaImage credit:
View of Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, with Bellview Airlines, and Kenya Airlines jets at the terminal. MMA is the ninth busiest airport in Africa by volume of traffic but it has the second highest passenger growth rate on the continent at 23.5%.
