take a set of bombers with you

Starr

1 pint or 10 you still wake with the moter of all hang overs. Yay for formaldahyde.

We believe that the best security is no security at all; we move around discretely and irregularly and just get on with the job.

As a former professional in this area (meaning I don’t do it any more, not that I used to be professional but now I’m inept), you and your employer are being fantastically negligent. The very fact that you’re reduced to asking a bunch of commenters on a forum shows how inadequate your position is.

It sounds like you’re in engineering or something: imagine if some new grad came up to you and said “I think the best form of project management is no management at all”, or “the best form of quality assurance is no assurance at all”. You’d give them a clip around the ear and tell them to stop being so stupid.

I’ve stayed at that hotel. Its not the most salubrious of places at the best of times!

What on earth do you do for a job (genuine question)?

If you do go then perhaps brief friends and family back home, that should they receive any ‘Nigerian scam’ e-mails not to delete them immediately!

@Konabunny

As a former professional in this area (meaning I don’t do it any more, not that I used to be professional but now I’m inept), you and your employer are being fantastically negligent. The very fact that you’re reduced to asking a bunch of commenters on a forum shows how inadequate your position is.

In response I would say this : I think the OP`s intention was to start a debate which is the whole purpos of the ot forum !
Secondly, yes there is a greater risk of all sorts of things going wrong in Nigeria and it sometimes does but these occurences are gradually reducing, there is a massive market out there which if handled correctly will bring prosperity to both West Africa and the UK suppliers working there, Lagos now boasts two modern shopping malls and an accompanying growing middle class who want to spend money, there is still immense amounts of poverty and that will always be so however more and more ordinairy peoples lives are improving and that can only be for the better.

If more UK suppliers looked seriously at the market there this improvement would happen quicker.

In response I would say this : I think the OP`s intention was to start a debate which is the whole purpos of the ot forum !

Which is all fine well and good when it comes to debating the merits of wheel size, but I’d be more inclined to seek the advice of the professionals when it comes to putting my safety on the line….

Secondly, yes there is a greater risk of all sorts of things going wrong in Nigeria and it sometimes does but these occurences are gradually reducing, there is a massive market out there which if handled correctly will bring prosperity to both West Africa and the UK suppliers working there, Lagos now boasts two modern shopping malls and an accompanying growing middle class who want to spend money, there is still immense amounts of poverty and that will always be so however more and more ordinairy peoples lives are improving and that can only be for the better.

This is spot on. Nigeria is my company’s biggest market in the world, we are probably the best-known and the biggest British supplier to the market, we sell on credit and we don’t have any payment problems because our customers need the regularity of supplies. We supply raw materials, which stimulate sales and quite a lot of which are re-exported to the neighbouring ECOWAS countries bringing cash into the Nigerian economy. We do well because we provide a quality product and service to a market where people are accustomed to being cheated and robbed. Nigeria itself is a fascinating, impressive country with incredibly hard-working and resourceful people who labour, mostly uncomplaining, under a government of incompetent idiots whose sole ambition is to loot the economy as fast as they can before the end of their term of office. Euromonitor has predicted a 30% increase in our sector in the next 5 years thanks to increasing personal wealth amongst Nigerians and we are just beginning to see the informal roots of that growth.

We’ve been selling there since 1967 so we know the market and the country pretty well, I’ve been going there two or three times a year since 1986. As the poster above writes, for anybody who’s prepared to make the effort and have a little trust it can be a hugely rewarding, satisfying export market.

One of my lot stayed there last week and wasn’t even a little bit kidnapped. From this sample, it means it’s 100% safe. Or people from Scottish universities are 100% not worth the hassle of kidnapping.

Nigeria is our biggest market as well. We have anonymous apartments in the city, so there’s no way they’d be targeted. If you want a recommendation, try the Wheatbaker hotel, just up the road from our compound. It’s pleasant, but small enough to not be a major target: http://www.legacyhotels.co.za/en/hotels/wheatbaker

I’ve stayed there when our apartments where full and it’s fine.

It’s to be hoped those terrorists aren’t STW readers.

Au contraire, any STW terrorist will be far too busy arguing about double spaces to actually do any terroring.

Your work must be pretty important.

My success rate of actually making it to meet anyone anywhere in the 3rd world for work is about 10%. A slighty dodgy looking bloke just needs to walk past an embassy or government building and my trip is cancelled. We stick out like sore thumbs though, no prospect of being discreet.

I’d say (in the absence of professional advice), go with your gut, you’re still alive after doing this for some time so you’re either lucky or sufficiently cautious.

Good luck and I hope you stay safe 🙂

Would another option be to stay with your colleague who has been there ages and knows the score ?

Not really an option.

This entire story is depressing the hell out of me – has anybody seen the video on the news made by the Boko Haram guys who say they kidnapped the girls? They look like drugged-up clowns. People like that can operate with impunity because President Goodluck and his cronies are so completely incompetent. I have absolutely no faith at all in the ability of any official agency to protect citizens; if anything happens they will just run around like headless chickens. Those girls are not being rescued because of incompetence and because in northern Nigeria this kind of atrocity happens almost daily and nobody really cares. Up to now the Lagos area has been spared because Boko Haram would find it difficult to operate there but anybody with a bit of discretion and professionalism could cause mayhem.

Most of the places I worked would say refer to foreign office guidance. Also your company should be doing any interpretation of the guidance and making any arrangements based in that if travelling is essential.

They look like drugged-up clowns.

When the news reporter announced the clip I thought right he’ll be a solemn-speaking etc bloke.

What he was/is comes across as those loons that ran rampant in Sierra Leone a few years.

Is the bloke high on something? That ‘grin’. Weird.

The story amongst Nigerians is that the Hausa politicians in the north are unhappy that the current president is, by default since the death of Yar’Adua, the hapless Christian Goodluck Jonathan. Traditionally the president is a Muslim northerner, so this means the northerners aren’t able to continue to loot the country in the way they normally do. By contrast the Niger Delta instability has largely died away because the Christian Igbo politicians there have all got their snouts in the trough. Consequently the northern politicians are arming these idiots and encouraging Boko Haram (which is Hausa for “book-o is forbidden”) in an effort to destabilise Goodluck’s presidency. So once again personal ambition and greed are ruining the country.

Keep your shoes on

So once again personal ambition and greed are ruining the country.

Hardly surprising, that is the African way! Whole of SSA is riddled with corruption…

😯

I have absolutely no faith at all in the ability of any official agency to protect citizens

There is a gigantic global industry engaged in the protection of people for whom state protection is inadequate and in the analysis of how political trends will impact the operations of companies like yours. Is now the time at which you’re going to consider using their services?

Hardly surprising, that is the African way! Whole of SSA is riddled with corruption…

It’s also the way of all the western governments and businesses that have been complicit in a fair amount of the corruption/instability over the years.

Is now the time at which you’re going to consider using their services?

Definitely not. We export to 96 different countries and in 47 years we’ve never used a security consultant. My colleagues visit all of Latin America, Russia and the Middle East and I travel all over Africa and we always rely on local knowledge, which is free and a good deal more accurate and up to date than anything a self-styled security consultant can tell you. Also, as I wrote earlier, the best way to draw attention to yourself is to employ security, which in the African context usually means paying for a bored and inexperienced Police constable with a rusty gun on a string who falls asleep in the front seat of your car.

The decision has been taken that Pakistan is far too dangerous for a Western visitor and for that reason I haven’t visited the country for a few years.

Commercially speaking we operate a discrete and reliable service from unmarked premises inside a secure compound using unmarked vehicles and I don’t think we’ve ever had a serious theft or incident. The worst thefts we have suffered have been at the hands of avaricious officials from local and national government agencies visiting us on a supposedly official basis then demanding cash to do their salaried jobs.

the best way to draw attention to yourself is to employ security, which in the African context usually means paying for a bored and inexperienced Police constable with a rusty gun on a string who falls asleep in the front seat of your car.

That’s bad security. It’s not the only option. The industry is far more sophisticated that you are aware, apparently.

If you had proper advisors, you wouldn’t be relying on bar room gossip and mountain bike websites for advice and information, you wouldn’t be surprised by Boko Haram, and you wouldn’t be confused about how it will affects your business. Your position speaks for itself.

My original post was merely an open, light-hearted question to the effect that it might be better to stay at the hotel that has been identified, on the simple grounds that that is now the least likely place for anything to happen. I’m told that the hotel and grounds are crawling with armed soldiers and this afternoon my local colleague is going there to review the situation. In the meantime I’ve booked another more discrete, non-American hotel nearby.

We are not surprised by Boko Haram; we have distributors in Jos, Kano, Maiduguri and Sokoto and we receive regular reports of their atrocities that don’t even make the international media. My post expressed depression and disgust, not surprise.

We are not confused about how the threat of terrorism affects our business; it has mostly closed down the northern markets because Muslim traders from neighboring countries like Chad and Niger are not coming to trade in Nigeria for fear of being lynched or shot by the Nigerian Police because they are Muslims and they are carrying cash.

Globalti well said.

Konabunny come on? Globalti is right security often sleep run away or are the ones to steal from you. Decent quality is very rarely around and very very expensive for nigeria its good for gunboats to protect vessel. but you can’t hire that level of security for all people walking around. unmarked cars, unmarked buildings low key is the way to go. I was once told to pout a flag for the visit of the CEO I told them I would personall burn it and take the next flight out. Was always really happy when someone said they could’n find my office or had passed numerous times in front unaware it could be there.

I’ve seen so-called “security” consultants around Africa and the thought of having one of those bozos around me fills me with horror; they are usually big, loud, crude men who order locals around in the most insensitive manner.

they are usually big, loud, crude men who order locals around in the most insensitive manner.

They sound like Afrikaans, most of the the really nasty racist ones have left SA and carry on as if Apartheid was still going on, but in other countries….

In Nigeria it’s usually Americans working for the oil industry. They make me embarrassed to be white.

Perhaps the o/p and anyone else thinking about not going should be thankfull they have the choice, the locals and police, security, hospital staff have to live there and live with the problems propogated by the media and other sourses.