Feb – 2007

Feb. 28, 2007
RE:  THE NIGERIAN NIGHTMARE:  MISSIONARY TRIP TO NIGERIA.  PART I

Hi Friends.  I am back from the crusade trip to Nigeria.  To say the least, it was unbelievable.  Nigeria is an oil rich nation and I was expecting to see something similar to Saudi Arabia: plush landscapes, quality social services, modernized facilities, etc.  What I saw I simply could not believe.  Most of the country is in satanic poverty.  I have never seen this kind of societal devastation and I have been to Mexico.

The country has a collapsing infrastructure; open sewers, dinosaur sized pot holes in the highways, mind numbing poverty, open land fills burning trash day and night around Lagos (it looks like Gehenna at night), public urination and defecation with zero commercial, residential, pollution, public or governmental safety standards.  Almost all the buildings in Lagos would be condemned in America based on a wide range of major construction, drainage, plumbing and electrical code violations.  In the USA the politicians are exceptionally corrupt, however, they are significantly more honest when compared to the politicians running Nigeria.  The oil companies and politicians steal billions annually, leaving the citizens in abject poverty with no social services, dilapidated and poorly supplied hospitals, filth ridden apartments, collapsing buildings, unreliable electricity, unaffordable food with no sewer, telephone, sanitation or clean water services.  I never saw a country’s government care less about it’s citizens than this one.  Most of Lagos is, by our standards, a slum.

The police corruption there is remarkable.  Cops perform routine shake downs to support their meager $100.00 a month salaries.  Citizens, some of which look like skeletons wearing rags, roam across freeways dodging traffic, desperately trying to eek out an existence selling near-useless retail items to thousands of people driving severely damaged and dilapidated automobiles.  They are  paralyzed in daily traffic jams you would not see in California.  Widows and the physically and mentally disabled are dumped on freeway medians and roadsides to panhandle.  The air pollution in Lagos makes Phoenix and LA look like Golden, Colorado.  The sunsets are clouded over with a stench ridden atmospheric soot.  Every building in Lagos is blackened from pollution and billowing smoke drifting from open land fill fires burning everywhere.  There are city dumps all over Lagos that also double as open public bathrooms.  I took pictures that cannot be described without seeing them.  I have never seen Satan brutalize humans like this before.  I did not realize we do not have poverty in America.  Our homeless would qualify as middle class citizens in Nigeria!  In Lagos, it is common for people to live in broken down shacks, surviving on a few calories a day and sleeping on porches, hallways or the floors of disintegrating buildings.  You cannot get the grasp of this heartache on the evening news.  Almost nothing works there.  Simple things like wells, septic tanks, lights, land telephone lines, light poles, home appliances, bathrooms, etc. frequently don’t exist or don’t function.  Grade schools have virtually no supplies and look like military target practice zones.  The school rooms have no windows or doors.  There are no traffic laws there.  Everyone drives anywhere they want to, including BACKWARDS AND THE WRONG WAY DOWN THE FREEWAY!  It is common to drive down the highway and see a VAN DESIGNED TO SIT 8 LOADED WITH 25 PEOPLE COMING RIGHT AT YOU GOING THE WRONG WAY!  A Formula 1 race car driver could not survive one day there.  Drivers in trucks and cars pour pollution from their mufflerless vehicles into the air like midwest crop dusters.  Most of Lagos looks like a nuclear warhead went off and the government workers air lifted to safety and left the citizens behind to fend for themselves.  The dirt there appears reddish, like it has been napalmed.  I sat in my hotel room at night weeping for the people, overcome by the human devastation.

One day a cop pulled us over for a traffic violation.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had not seen a vehicle the entire day that did not commit one.  The airport is in mass of confusion and looks like a patched Iraq bomb shelter.  The weather is the same year round; bad.  It’s always hot, rainy, humid or dry.  Abandoned trucks and cars litter the highways that look like they were hit by scud missals.  If a vehicle finally gives up the ghost it is simply pushed to the side of the road and left there permanently.  It never gets removed.  The few people that do own homes live in compound-like structures, surrounded by 12′ tall block fences with spikes, barbed wire, spears or broken bottles lining the tops of them.  All the homes have huge iron gates with indentured-like servants working as gate guards, cooks and house cleaners.  Many necessities are more expensive there than the same product you would buy at Walmart in America!  I was surprised at how expensive gas and commodities were.  Lagos does not sleep.  At night all the road side vendors are still open selling everything from uncooked and un-refrigerated meat & fish to used auto parts, illuminated by thousands of small burning oil lamps.  The average family has 4 children, none of which the parents are able to adequately support.  There is no birth control, sponsored recreation or family planning available.  The main recreation is soccer.  There is no banking credit or loan system and no way for most of the citizens to get out of poverty. How anyone could leave an entire country in this condition is beyond my comprehension.  This was a culture shock I had never experienced before.  The good news? The moving of the Holy Ghost:  Part II is next!  Love to all, Bro. Mike