‘Anything for the boys?’

My Serbian friend keeps gushing about the general friendliness of Nigerians. She loves everything about us: our literature, pop culture, and our general pleasantness. One day, as she was repeating that particular song, I cut her short. ‘What exactly do you mean by our friendly nature?’ Imagine my surprise when she answered that it was the way Nigerian airport officials treated her whenever she came into Lagos that formed her grossly inaccurate perception. She was enamoured by their courteous smiles and willingness to help her with the luggage while punctuating every sentence with: ‘Happy weekend, Ma’, ‘God bless you, Ma’, ‘Welcome to Nigeria, Ma’. I did not have the heart to correct her naivete. She was, however, curious about a question they frequently asked whenever they stamped her passport: ‘Anything for the boys?’

Working in the health sector allows me the privilege of moving about freely within the city during this period of Lock down in Kano. Although my movement is usually to and from the hospital, I sometimes stray to the random open supermarket when we run low on supplies at home. There are numerous checkpoints that have been set up to checkmate movement of people and for this reason I find myself meeting different uniformed officials, to and from work.

The first check point I usually meet is manned by the police who rush to offer their greetings. Unlike my Serbian friend, I am not amused. Choruses of ‘Good morning, Dr’, ‘Your boys are Loyal, Ma’, ‘May God protect you, Ma’, ‘It shall be well with you’, are sung. Being a Nigerian, I should be accustomed to these theatrics, but on some days, my emotions get the better of me. ‘Hajia, give us something to break our fast with’ one states, matter-of-factly. I drive past, angry at this institutionalised begging.

At another checkpoint, it is the Civil Defence. These ones are even more aggressive. ‘Dr, should we come for our sugar?’, ‘Dr, do something for us under this hot sun’, ‘Dr, anything for your guys’. I notice luxurious cars being waved off at check points. They do not show any form of ID and clearly have no stickers on their windshield. Their ticket to movement during this lockdown period is the freshly minted Naira notes they disburse in return to the question ‘Anything for the boys?’

Similar scenarios play out at other checkpoints manned by other Uniformed officials: Hisbah, Road safety and KAROTA. By the time I start my journey back home in the evening, weary and tired, their begging becomes less vigorous, and so cars are waved away, nonchalantly. Most of the uniformed personnel in charge of enforcing the lock down are fasting and therefore become characteristically lethargic after 4pm. The people of Kano, having noticed this weakness, choose this time to come out in droves and go about their customary activities defying government orders. As a result, light traffic builds up in the evenings as the officials gather under the shade of trees resting or in some cases, calculating the profit they made, extorting people.

You see this thing called corruption? Its roots are long and far reaching. It is like a plant which sprouts and yield fruits dangling from long, tortuous branches. The roots are steeped so far into the ground making the tree almost unshakeable until one is confused from where to start felling it. The act of demanding and giving bribes has become so rampant that even when the federal government augments the state security to enforce a lockdown, the people defy it. The rich feel they can bribe their way out of any situation while the poor seize any opportunity to make an extra buck as they could care less about the government. It is a two-way street and the sight is not pretty.

A long time ago, a colleague, now late, taught me an ‘unofficial’ way of pacifying these beggars (pardon my vocabulary). He taught me never to give money, but instead give something beneficial. He would fill the back of his car with loaves of bread or bags of water, whenever he embarked on any road trip and donated them charitably, to any uniformed official he met along the way, whether or not they asked. He took pity on them, as they stood by the road side, supposedly protecting us from criminals and terrorists alike. And even though, I am averse to giving, I do not deny that these people sometimes suffer greatly at the hands of our insensitive government. These days, in response to ‘Hajiya, anything for us?’, I give out hand sanitizers and cloth face masks. It may not be what they need, but it is what I am willing to offer. They might as well keep safe during this COVID-19 era.

Hence, in future, when we want to analyse some of the reasons for the ineffective lockdown and the consequent community spread of the virus in Nigeria, let it be known that a key reason was, well; ‘Anything For The Boys?