Monday, I told you how I ended up in Nigeria, having left Nairobi on March 21, about a week after the first Covid-19 case was announced in Kenya.
I was travelling to oversee a three-day project in Lagos, and later on to Owerri, a rural town in the South East of Nigeria, popular for its many hotels and entertainment spots.
Owerri is about eight hours away from Lagos by road, and about an hour by air, which is how I planned to get there. Time was of the essence, therefore I could not afford to drive to the destination, even though this would have been the best way to experience this part of the country.
On arrival at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, we were screened for high fever and offered a sanitiser for our hands before proceeding to fill in a form with all our details, including where we were going to stay as well as local contacts in case officials needed to reach us.
The social distancing message was yet to register in most people’s minds since there was crowding and pushing on the queues at the immigration counters.
I intended to get a visa on arrival, so I proceeded to the visa office. After a two-hour wait due to a system failure, I finally got my 30-day visa and finally exited the airport. After buying a phone line I called Lanre Ajkobi, our local partner, to tell him that I had arrived.
I hit the ground running on my second day, Sunday 22, trying to keep up with the news about the new coronavirus, hoping to be able to get the project running before things got worse.
Because we were product testing for a beverage, and speaking to quite a number of random consumers, we understood that standards of hygiene had to be very high.
We had thought of everything, including providing running water, soap and sanitiser and pre-attendance screening to keep us and everyone we talked to safe, but as I found out when we began working people were not really worried about Covid-19; to them it was a disease that affected only those that had travelled by air, therefore they had nothing to worry about. That evening Nigeria’s president announced that the airport would be closed the next day. On hindsight, I should have taken a flight back home the next day.
After consulting with a colleague back in Kenya, we decided that since I was already on the ground it would be prudent to ensure a smooth run of day one and then leave our partner, Lanre, to proceed with the rest of the team. We argued that since this was an unprecedented situation, one the world had never experienced before, the directive to close the airport would not be so strict as not to allow a few more flights out of the country just a day after the directive.
We further argued that many were unprepared for the closure, therefore, the number of people trying to beat the deadline would be too big for Nigeria’s government to ignore. We could not have been more mistaken, as I soon found out. After a successful run I went back to my hotel and packed, ready to return home.
Ndinda is Research Manager, Transform Research Africa Limited. She is a mother of two and grandmother of one.
TOMORROW: I am in for a rude shock when I get to Murtala Muhammed International Airport looking forward to return home.
