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Giant and DwarfTurkish soap operas have more recently been flooding television screens in Central Europe.All you needed to do was enter your bank details and pay a modest $100 fee, and then towait for your millions to come. Or maybe not, as the case may be.The Czech traveller and writer Iva Pekárková provided a very affectionate description ofher experiences in Nigeria in her book “Naijda, the stars in my heart”. Pekárková marrieda younger Nigerian in Prague and chose to visit Nigeria with her husband his family. Stayingwith her new husband’s family allowed her to peek under the hood of what a commonvisitor can experience. In addition to everyday life and some humorous situations, the bookalso captures many more serious aspects of Nigerian life. Among them are experiences withcorrupt policemen extracting fees from car drivers for passing through “their sentry point”or youth criminality and the eternal fear of mothers that their son does not get into thehands of the dreaded mobile police, sadly infamous for its brutality and impunity. The term“youth” in Nigeria—as in most of Africa—applies to all young men who still did not marryand establish their own family. Therefore much more related to the social status of theyoung people, than to chronological age. Some “youngsters” may be 40 years old—andtheir mothers still worry about them.Working as a specialist for the World Bank, I did not come into such intimate contactwith the Nigerian reality as Ms. Pekárková did, nevertheless my work on development projectsin the Niger Delta has given me plenty of negative experience, and my view of Nigeriais inevitably quite critical. I for sure do not know any other country in Africa, where I havetravelled with such dislike as I did in Nigeria—and I know I am not the only one with thesame experience. A negative perception of Nigeria among so many foreigners stems frommany things and one of them seems to be Nigeria’s widespread incivility towards otherpeople. It is unknown to me where this originates from, but I found that some Europeansperceived this rude behavior to be a sign of racism against white people. I daren’t judgewhether such racism is widespread among Nigerians or whether it exists at all, but I canimagine that in some cases discourtesy and rudeness, which many Nigerians appear tocommonly show towards their black co-citizens, can be perceived by unprepared Europeanvisitors as racist behavior.Of course, as individuals, Nigerians are nice people. I came to know a lot of nice andwonderful people in this country. The problem is how the society acts as a whole. You realizethis immediately upon your arrival into the country as you get off the plane and startwaiting in a long queue, which is barely moving. While in this queue many uniformed peopleare walking around, starting conversations and asking a multitude of questions—sometotally unrelated to your visit. They are not necessarily annoying, but it is totally obviousthat these people have nothing else to do. Over-employment in public offices in Africancountries is sometimes breathtaking. You can also acquire a sense—often correct—thatbetween the lines (and sometimes openly) a small bribe would shorten your waiting timeand prevent customs officials from digging through your luggage so much.When leaving the country the situation may be even worse.64