After the much-advertised apology of the South African government over the deportation of 125 Nigerians on the controversial issue of yellow fever cards, I feel relived to share my group’s experience in the hands of overzealous Port Health and Immigration staff at Oliver R. Tambo Airport (ORTA), Johannesburg on March 2, 2012.
After the much-advertised apology of the South African government over the deportation of 125 Nigerians on the controversial issue of yellow fever cards, I feel relived to share my group’s experience in the hands of overzealous Port Health and Immigration staff at Oliver R. Tambo Airport (ORTA), Johannesburg on March 2, 2012.
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I had arrived with 32 children and four other adults from our secondary school on South African Airways (SAA) flight SA61. It was almost a full flight. We had landed ahead of schedule at 4.55 am. While taxiing to the gate, a hostess made an announcement to the effect that the Port Health had required that we brought out our yellow cards and passports. When the aircraft had come to a halt at the gate, I instructed the group to comply with the hostess’ instruction. We filed out in two columns after a head count and marched through the chute towards the airport. As soon we got a glimpse of the inside of the beautiful ORTA, we were literally ambushed by a team of unsmiling ladies and gentlemen feverishly examining passengers’ yellow cards. By the time it was our turn, more than two-dozen passports and yellow cards have been impounded. The affected passengers, most of them Nigerians were asked to move to one side, while the cleared passengers, mostly South Africans, were asked to proceed to Immigration. One after another, my group’s passports and yellow cards were also impounded. We thought less of this, at first, concluding it was a mistake that would soon be corrected, and that soon we would be on our way to a healthy breakfast in our hotel in the upscale area of Sandton. In the long walk to the Port Health office, we believed that no harm would come to us in the spirit of African brotherhood. Not in our wildest imagination did we think that ordeal would be as humiliating as it was long.
The Port Health office was located close to the Immigration. Two officers of Port Health – a lady and a man – soon mixed with our group and started asking questions about the authenticity of our yellow cards. The officers’ faces were frozen with anger. Even though I could not place my hands on the anger, I resisted the temptation to jump into conclusions that it was out of hostility towards my fellow countrymen. I approached the officers and offered to answer their questions. Their frozen faces soon gave way to smiles. And then came the comments that I could not immediately place.
“You seem different from other Nigerians we have met. You speak good English. You must have lived outside Nigeria for several years.” I did not take kindly to this. My response was swift, “I am a full-blooded Nigerian. And just so you may know, I have never spent more than two months outside Nigeria before.” They got the message and changed the line of discussion. The two walked away. I thought they would enter the office and tell their colleagues to let the group of 37, as we were later on referred to, enter into their beautiful country.
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Any hope for an early release dimmed as we were asked to leave the expansive lobby in front of their office to a small room that obviously could not conveniently contain more that 30 out of the about 100 affected passengers. At this point, I called one of the officers and informed him politely that I would not allow my children, 32 African children, to be subjected to that humiliation. I demanded to know what was happening.
“Your yellow cards are invalid,” an officer responded without any feeling, his eyes blazing with fire.
“What is invalid about them?” I asked.
“Disparity in batch numbers. That is it. And you are all going back home.”
“The practice is that you give us the vaccination at the airport.”
“We used to do that. But not anymore. The policy has changed.”
“So, what is next?”
“I will take you batch by batch to a place where some paper work will be done towards your return.”
“You can’t do that. The parents of these children put them in my care. I will vehemently resist any attempt to separate us. You will have to deal with all of us in one batch. All the 37 of us.”
He looked at me with what seemed like a practiced disdain and said, “That’s not possible. We have no room large enough to contain all of you.” I insisted. A senior Immigration official walked along, listened to my protestation, and supported my point of view. It was the first time someone had seen reason in the almost one-hour ordeal. Thereafter, we were marched to one room after another, each of them too small to contain us, until we finally landed at the departure hall of Terminal A building. It was victory No 1 for us. We relished this new location as we spread throughout the hall. The seats were made of fine metal, hard but more comfortable than the tiled floor the previous location offered. It was to be our home for the next fourteen hours.
“Can I ask you a question, please?” I directed that to a Port Health official. “Yes, you may.” “I was wondering if you made a provision for water and food for my children. They are African children in whom we are trying to instill a pan-African spirit. This might do a lot of damage to that spirit if a fellow African country treats them inhumanely. Or what do you think?” Even a hardened man has his soft part. He responded with emotions, in what was another first. “I am so sorry, we have no provision for that.” I thanked him but quickly added, “What you are saying is that till 2.30 pm when our flight back to Lagos is scheduled to take off, my children would not have anything to eat or drink?” It was about 7.00 am at this time. I knew the answer but felt really good asking that. I wanted his conscience hurt further. I wanted the humanity in him to come to the fore. He walked away sad, I believe. I was later to ask a South African Airways staff the same question. The Afrikaan lady was less sympathetic. “It’s not my company’s fault. So, there will be no food or water.” I did not let her go without lecturing her on the superiority of rightness over rules. “Rules are made for man, not man for rules,” I philosophized. I do not think anything I said got beyond her hard exterior. It was a twist of irony that on March 8, 2012, on our way back to Nigeria, this same lady and I bantered and laughed heartily together before our group flew out of ORTA. It made me conclude there is always a room for reconciliation between the tormentor and the tormented. Isn’t that what Nelson Mandela’s The Long Walk To Freedom is all about?
In the following hours that the paperwork was going on, I had time to think hard and long. Our school, Elyon College and Leadership Academy, located in Abeokuta, is a secondary school built on the principles of Jesus with the main objective of raising a new generation of leaders to fill the huge leadership gap that exists in the professions, businesses and politics in Africa. As part of our leadership curriculum we alternate national and international leadership tours annually. Our international tours, restricted to only African countries, had taken us to Ghana and Kenya in the seven-year existence of the school. The trip to South Africa was our third in the series. As I sat down wondering the implications of our imminent return to Nigeria, I shuddered. My main concern was the damage to the psyche of the children, aged between 10 and 16. A secondary concern was the loss of over R450,000 (more than N12 Million) already expended in airfares, hotels and local transport reservations. We stood to lose all that money because of the clauses in the booking agreements.
My thoughts soon drifted to the children. It was getting to 11.00 am and they had not eaten anything. I asked everyone that mattered how to get food and drinks. The brick wall was with the security. The question was: how do you pass food and drinks through the eagle-eyed security men and women? It seemed impossible. But by this time, we had made friends with almost everyone in the hall – from the cleaner to the security staff, from the airline staff to other passengers. In less than hour, a plan to get us food and water had been hatched. It took another three hours before the intricate plan could be implemented.
In the meantime, an SAA staff came in with boarding passes for the group and for other Nigerians, who had joined us in the hall, having been released from detention. The Nigerian passengers were given no option but to collect the passes and pass through security to the boarding gates area. While the Nigerians were being herded like sheep to the gates, my group and I, now enjoying a near celebrity status, gathered to pray. We asked the Lord to break through human and policy barriers to allow us enter the country. Not doing so, we told the Lord, is to leave the students devastated and their pan-African spirit strangulated. But if in His wisdom, He considered returning to Nigeria a better option, we would submit to His eternal will and sovereignty. We knew what was at stake here was the integrity of our country’s health system. It was not lost on us that South Africa as a sovereign nation had the right to make policies that it thinks would safeguard its borders. But what we could not fathom was the Gestapo-like approach the Port Health had adopted in communicating and implementing its nation’s health policy. After prayers, we distributed the passes and headed to the gates through the security, sad but hopeful for a last-minute miracle. We were trying to settle down on the seats near the gates when an SAA staff – a black lady - came running to us, saying, "Your High Commissioner is downstairs. Go and see him. And please, don't tell anyone that I told you." I quickly led two other adults through the security, and back to the departure hall.
Waiting for us in the hall were two Nigerians – one was a staff of the High Commission in Pretoria while the other was from the Consulate in Johannesburg. Our calls to a Nigerian friend in Johannesburg, who then called the Consulate and other powerful people within South Africa, had started yielding fruits. Our friend had also called his contacts in the top hierarchy of SAA Nigeria. In a well-coordinated effort from across the two countries, help was being sought for the group of 37. I quickly introduced myself as the leader of the group. I ran through our ordeal, now more than eight hours old. I ended with the fact that the rest of the group were at the boarding gate, about to board a flight back to Lagos in less than 15 minutes. Somehow, the presence of the two gentlemen brought us some relief, even though a Port Health staff had assured us not even the Nigerian High Commissioner could save us. Your High Commissioner was here yesterday, he volunteered, and he could not prevent us from turning back the 25 Nigerians without the valid yellow cards. Even then, the presence of the two gentlemen was reassuring. They were as swift as they were professional. The High Commission staff quickly appraised the situation and gave a call to the High Commissioner. When he dropped the phone, he was straight to the point. He ordered smiling, "return the boarding passes. You are going no where." My kids, who had now joined us in the hall, went wild with jubilation, attracting other passengers in the process. To reassure us this was not a war between ordinary Nigerians and South Africans, some of the South African staff of SAA, the airport security and intending passengers joined in the jubilation. Some of them had in quiet tones derided the overzealousness of their Port Health and immigration staff. One Afrikaan man, obviously a preacher, even prayed for us that the Lord might intervene in the matter
Minutes dragged into hours without any news. Tired, many of the group members spread out on the benches and had a deserved sleep. Those who were not sleeping showed signs of hunger. I knew I must look for food or have a bigger problem on my hands. I immediately reopened the plan hatched some three hours before, and parted away with a whopping US$300 to feed the group.
A call from SAA office in Lagos suggested we obtain a letter from a government medical centre to authenticate our yellow cards. After many spirited calls to Abeokuta city, I finally got the Federal Medical Centre in our city to write the letter. Within half an hour, the letter had reached both SAA and the Nigerian High Commission, both of who were now engaged in an intense negotiation with Port Health. What we thought was the end of the sad tale was actually the beginning of a long wait. I remembered Nelson Mandela's Long Walk To Freedom and I shuddered at the possibility of spending the night at the airport with all the kids. May this freedom walk be shorter, I prayed.
It was two hours after the intervention of the Consulate and the High Commission that a friendly SAA staff, came in bubbling with hope. "Time to go," he announced cheerfully. We were about to follow on the long walk to the Port Health office when it dawned on us that we had invested US $300 on food that was yet to arrive. We thought it wise to wait for a few minutes to pick up the food, not too sure how long more we were going to wait at the Port Health office. It was indeed a wise decision to take as we ended up spending another five hours after the SAA staff’s announcement. We were only too happy to spend those long hours in the departure hall that was by far more comfortable than the Port Health office. To our great relief, the food and the drinks arrived thirty minutes later. We were more than refreshed and energized. Curiously, no official asked us how we got the food in. It was obvious we had more friends than enemies.
I must have called the Consular staff more than a dozen times, checking up on the progress of the negotiation. All along, I had been using a Nigerian roamed line. The thought of paying heavy charges on my Blackberry did not cross my mind. I was too happy that I was carrying a postpaid line. My wife and I, now bored stiff, positioned ourselves at a vantage point where the Consular staff was likely to emerge from. Several times, we moved close to the security checkpoint, nearest to the Port Health office – the theatre of humiliation and the venue of the negotiation. We both answered the call of nature at some point. When we woke up, more than three-quarters of the group was still asleep.
At about 8.10 pm, the Consulate staff emerged with the news that we have been finally allowed entry. I could imagine the breath of fresh air Mandela breathed as he walked out of the much-dreaded Robben Island prison into a more humane prison in Cape Town. In less than a minute everyone was wide-awake. Then began our own long walk to freedom. The series of long corridors ending at Port Health office suddenly became even longer. And when an official of Port Health asked us to wait for his boss to formally sign us off, we were not amused at all. Another short wait at the immigration for clearance looked like a decade, and made us sick. As we waited on the queue to obtain the final immigration clearance, I wondered what fate had befallen the 100 Nigerian passengers that arrived ORTA on SAA and Arik Air that day. They did not make it to this stage. They had been turned back like common criminals. They must be licking their wounds at the moment. I wondered how much money had gone down the drains, how many opportunities had been lost, how many hopes had been dashed.
Finally, at about 9.00 pm, the last member of the group crossed the immigration barrier into ‘freedom’, ending a 16-hour ordeal.
Abiodun Fijabi, a public speaker and trainer, is the founder of Elyon College and Leadership Academy, Abeokuta, Nigeria.
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