Wahala Abuja

I needed to go to Abuja on a business trip and thought it would be nice to bring Viv with me. It is our wish to see as much as possible of the country and the capital is a nice place to start. We stayed in the Transcorp Hilton, a beautiful hotel in the middle of the city with swimming pools, good restaurants and nice bars. We arrived on Tuesday and flew with the airline with the most beautiful name: Air Peace! As you can see, I'm way too tall for this aircraft.

Abuja is a city where a lot of money is spend. A brand new terminal is being constructed (almost ready). Daniel fetched us up and when driving towards town it was amazing how good the roads were, brand new and huge new petrol stations with at least 50 pumps each, although not used. Fantastic new buildings. The biggest church I've ever seen was just opened.More than 100.000 people fit in the church.

While being in Abuja I also visited our regional sales office as part of our bi-annual Roadshow. Via this Roadshow we inform all our people about the state of our business. It was nice to meet our team in Abuja. I needed to be in Abuja to get approved by the Government as Boardmember of our Pensionfund. For this I visited the National Police and also the FIB (Force Intelligence Bureau). First we visited the Police offices where I ended up in a room of approx. 1.5 meter2 with 3 people (Daniel and 2 police officers). The objective was to get my fingerprints (all of them). They took this huge inkblocque and took each individual finger and pressed it on a piece of paper. I felt like a criminal. After doing this we went to the FBI sorry FIB. Here I had to fill in a 15 page questionnaire. I had already done this before I came but unfortunately they had changed 2 questions so I had to fill it in completely again. When ready I was taken to take my fingerprints. Luckily here they had a biometric version. This all went smoothly. But when ready they decided to be sure and also came with the huge inkbloque. Because when computers are down my fingerprints are still available….. Final step was an interview. So while waiting for this the interviewer walked in and told her staff that she did not like interviewing me today and that I was to leave. The decision was final I had to come back on another date. So I spend this trip in summary on refilling out a form that I had already filled in before. Had three times my fingerprints taken and cleaned twice my completely black fingers with toiletpaper and cold water.

After the official part we did sightseeing with Jackson. Jackson works at NB in corporate communication and relations. We visited (not insight) the national mosque of Abuja. This looked spectacular. It has a completely golden roof. Next to it is the national church of Abuja. This symbolises really how Nigeria is functioning. The capital in Nigeria is in the middle of the country. In an area were most tribes can live and work together. The national mosque and the national church both are close to each other and it symbolises how religion can also be inclusive. We also drove around the ministeries, the senate and visited a very nice shopping mall. We ended with a dinner at the golf course. In the evening we did a customer tour around the city. We went to some great oulets like Secret Garden, The Junkyard, Johnny Rocket and ended in Cilantro. All of them I can recommend, but ending for dinner at Cilantro is really a must do. Cilantro is in the middle of a valley and is like a beautiful resort with fantastic food.

On the last day we wanted to buy a vase. We had seen it being sold along the roadside and we both really liked it. It is from clay and painted pink. We negotiated it down to 4000 Naira, which is just below 10 Euro. But then we needed it still transported to Lagos. My idea was to put it in the truck with our beer, but in the end it was airfreighted to Lagos. Packed very neatly to make sure it could not break. And to make sure of this the vase was fully cellotaped on the outside. When removing this of course you can guess the paint came off partly. It looks now really authentic with a real story behind his life.

But we love it and it has a nice place in our house.