NEWS FEATURE

More awareness of ECOWAS free movement please

Godwin Elendu: Five years after he was bundled off British Airways plane over non-possession of Ghanaian visa, this Nigerian passenger came close to an encore at Air France

  

Five years after he was bundled off an Accra, Ghana-bound British Airways plane in London, Nigerian-born Dr. Godwin Elendu almost suffered the same fate at the hands of Air France operatives in France while trying to board a flight to Lome, Togo, five weeks ago.

On both occasions, Elendu was told to present a visa to enter Ghana and Togo respectively or buy a connecting ticket to ensure he shall continue his travel all the way to Nigeria. Speaking with Travels inside his Lome office recently, Elendu recalled that he was literally bundled off a British Airways (BA) flight on September 5, 2008 because he didn't have a Ghanaian visa.

Reminiscing further on that unpleasant incident, Elendu said that, though he was heading to Nigeria, he had paid for a London-Accra ticket with the hope of later travelling by road from the Ghanaian capital to Lagos. Being Nigerian, Elendu does not need a visa to enter Ghana because of the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Protocol on Free Movement of Persons and Services. But, his attempt to explain this to BA authorities at Heathrow Airport in London fell on deaf ears. He was eventually off-loaded from the Accra-bound flight.

Enraged, Elendu rushed to the Nigerian High Commission in the British capital hoping to get redress through intervention by his country's diplomats, there. He thought wrong. Hear him: "Shockingly, when I got to Nigerian High Commission in London and complained, I met with cold shoulder." However, it must be pointed out, that this was in the days before the Jonathan Presidency.

Elendu again: "In fact, it turned out that the British Airways people were even more polite. After I met with rebuff at Nigerian High Commission, I went back to BA where one of the ticketing officers advised me to buy a connecting ticket from Accra to Lagos; explaining that, with this connecting ticket, BA could not stop me from flying to Accra over non-possession of Ghanaian visa." Consequently, Elendu was forced to cough out an additional British £76 for an Accra-Lagos ticket that he never came around to using.

"But, before I was able to fly, after being forced into paying for an Accra-Lagos ticket that I did not need, I was compelled to suffer additional unbudgetted expenses by way of hotel bills. I had to check into a hotel at my expense before I finally flew out of London the next day," Elendu rued. After arrival in Accra, Elendu had eventually made his way to Nigeria by road and therefore had no use for the Accra-Lagos ticket he had been compelled to buy in lieu of not having a Ghanaian visa. He subsequently took the Accra-Lagos ticket to British Airways for a refund. He did get something of a refund but lost about £20 British pounds as surcharge.

Interestingly, more than five years after his unpleasant experience with BA, Elendu almost ran into an encore with Air France sometime in December 2012. After a business trip to some European countries, Elendu wanted to return to Lome, Togo. However, when he went to buy an Air France's Paris-Lome ticket; an attendant had told him that he also needed to add a Lome-Lagos/Abuja connecting ticket to the bargain; otherwise he would be off-loaded since he didn't have a Togolese visa.

However, Elendu was eventually allowed to travel aboard that Air France flight to Lome without a Togolese visa after presenting his residence permit. Evidently, whereas they are familiar with the privileges of a Schengen Visa, European airlines' functionaries seem ignorant of the fact that Nigerians do not need visa to enter about 15 West African countries because of their status as ECOWAS citizens. But, is it purely a case of ignorance or does it have to do with more intricate or possible insidious issues?

If ignorance were the reason, does it mean that ECOWAS needs to do more to educate the world, including airline operators, about its Protocols; especially as it relates to Free Movement of Persons and Services within the sub-region? Over the last 20 years, Elendu has virtually traversed the world. Once upon a time, his love of travel saw him hopping from destination to destination in different countries across four continents within 10 days, all for the fun of it. Those days, fares were cheap and because he was much younger; he didn't mind the stress.

Today, however, aside from the vagaries of aging, which means fatigue after some long-haul flight as well as jet-lag from crossing vast longitudes; there are other issues. Fares have skyrocketted and no thanks to terrorists, flying has lost some of its sparkle. Yes, air-travel is no longer as pleasurable as it used to be for Elendu, an entrepreneur and writer based in Lome. For this Nigerian in Diaspora, the menace of terrorists mean that innocent people are overtly frisked and sometimes intimidated, even harassed. As a result, Elendu is no longer as frequently air-borne as he used to be. Albeit, he cannot completely do without flying. When business calls for travelling, Elendu moves.

However, he lamented that holders of the Nigerian passport are singled-out for harsh or rude treatment. Consequently, Nigerian travellers, he believes, suffer more than their fair share of stress. Elendu observed that, whereas nationals of numerous other countries are treated politely at countless airports across the world; he has suffered discrimination simply for carrying a Nigerian passport.

More often than not, Nigerians; Elendu intoned, are given the rude treatment for no just cause. Alayi, Abia State-born Elendu averred that, whereas Nigeria's Foreign Service was doing a lot to arrest incidents of maltreatment of Nigerians at some countries' airports in recent years; a lot more remains to be done before Nigerians are treated with deserved respect by the immigration services and other security personnel at foreign airports.

The Sun