Bad man looking good in Diop

Hola peeps.

It’s your friendly neighbourhood procrastinator. Y’all good?

How do I commence? Wait, lemme review where I stopped last blog post. Brb…oh yes, the issues at Juba International Airport. Turns out the case veered so off left field a Netflix limited series or, better yet, an NPR Tiny Desk session is required to properly convey all elements of my escapades.

Peep this: My dodgy ex-colleague never showed up at the airport to get my name cleared. You know the Naija saying, wetin you dey look for Sokoto dey your sókòtò? It essentially means what one’s been searching far and wide for has always been in front of one’s nose all along….

I gotta take a pause here to reflect on some terrible news I just received. A former colleague from Nigeria passed away a few minutes ago (late hours of June 6^th, 2024) after slumping while on a treadmill. Dude’s 44 years old and left behind a wife and 3 kids. Where does one start? What does one say?

The last time a close friend passed away I felt compelled to question my life and impulsively called up ex-girlfriend and proposed to her. This time I am not even considering that, particularly since same lady and I parted ways only 2 weeks ago. That got me thinking that maybe the idea of us was more appealing than the reality. She’s everything I ever prayed for, but it didn’t pan out. After such an event, the sane side of Tunde is contemplative, wondering if he coulda done anything differently, and after concluding he gave it his all, i.e., he was intentional this time, and vulnerable to boot, he is satisfied there wasn’t more he coulda done. Soon afterwards, the less rational Tunde started going over in his head potential girlfriend replacements. Thankfully, this lasted all of five seconds before melancholy set in, and the future he had envisioned for himself and the ex swamped his every thought. It didn’t help that he was listening to Lewis Capaldi’s NPR Tiny Desk performance on loop while struggling to try on the clothes she left behind in his apartment. Weirdo, much?

As I sit here freezing my butt off in the Joburg airport waiting on a connecting flight to Durban, I am tempted to unwrap luggage and don a jumper. A marked departure from the steamy weather I left behind in Juba yesterday. It’s supposed to be rainy season in Juba, but the rains have been few and far between. Due to incidents documented in last few blog entries I still get PTSD whenever it’s time to hand over my passport at the Juba immigration desk. As implied earlier, it took a pal I have known since my first trip to Juba in December 2014 to finally extricate me from the clutches of the Juba immigration folk.

 

After mate heard about my situation, and castigated me for not informing her earlier, she took me to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) – yes, of the entire country – and as she explained my predicament in Arabic I saw the IGP motion to another of the officers in his office. The dude he called upon was the head of police at the airport who happened to be in the IGP’s office on a separate matter. He confirmed he was familiar with my case and brought up my passport biopage on his phone. Didn’t realize I was that famous.

 

The Colonel indeed confirmed that their policy at the airport calls for any party that raises an issue to report to the airport when said issue has been resolved. After my friend clarified that numerous efforts to get my ex-colleague to return to the airport proved abortive, the IGP instructed the airport police Colonel to remove my name from the no-fly list if former colleague fails to show up. End of story, right? C’mon, does everything wrap up that easily in my adventures?

 

As my pal and the IGP turned their conversation to other matters, the Colonel called me to the side, showed me the passport biopage on his phone and again asked me to confirm it belongs to me. Following my affirmation his next question threw me for a loop, “How many passports do you have? I ask because there’s another pending case with your name, and this one is from Interpol.” U what?

 

He called my friend over, asked her how long she’d known me and mentioned the Interpol case. Apparently, I was wanted for travelling on another person’s passport. But how is that possible in these days of biometric authentication, I asked. The Colonel could not expatiate on the intricacies of the case, but requested we show up at the airport the next day.

 

At 2pm the following day, we arrived at the police section of the Juba International Airport and the Colonel calls the Interpol liaison to shed more light on the case. I was informed my passport number was declared missing and was since discovered to have been used by an Indian, a South Sudanese and yours truly. I wish I was joking. Again, I asked how this was possible with biometrics. The long and short of it was I was lucky to have met the Colonel at the IGP’s office the previous day else I may have attempted to travel out of Juba and been arrested after passport’s flagged for being on the “Interpol list”. Thereafter, I would be jailed until the investigation is concluded.

 

I forget to mention I had showed up at the airport with all the previous expired passports I had in my possession. My pal used this to demonstrate to the Colonel that I travel frequently and have never had any issues in South Sudan or anywhere else in the world until the recent case of ex-colleague. She suspected ex-colleague was up to his shenanigans and sought to know why the “Interpol case” only reared its head in the country, even though I recently travelled through the US, UK and Nigeria without triggering any suspicions. The Colonel directed that we drive to the Interpol central command in town for advice on next steps. As we departed my pal whispered to me to alert the Nigerian embassy. Ghen ghen.

 

We get to the Interpol office and the Director asks if I have ever reported my passport missing. He said the Nigerian Interpol authorities had declared my passport missing, so when the East African command recently did a sweep through their system it triggered a response that the “missing” passport was used to enter South Sudan. Nothing was mentioned about multiple persons travelling on my passport. The Director said they would write to the Interpol office in Nigeria to verify that I am the genuine recipient of the passport, and my passports would be released to me once they receive a response.  End of story, right? You must be new to this blog.

 

A week goes by with no response from Interpol. I start getting antsy as I am left with a week before trip to Nigeria on April 2^nd to surprise Chief for his 85^th birthday celebration. In another fortuitous case of the Sokoto-sókòtò principle, another pal turned out to be neighbours with the Interpol Deputy Director, the very officer in charge of communicating with the Nigerian Interpol service. The Deputy Director confirmed he had sent two messages to Nigeria but had yet to receive a response. I then set out to find someone in Nigeria with access to the Interpol service. After a few days, a friend I have known for circa 30 years introduced me to a fellow lawyer who had worked with the Nigerian Interpol branch. Dude promised to scour his contact list but assured me the Interpol doesn’t deign to concern themselves with stuff as trivial as missing passports.

 

With only 2 days left before trip, I reached out to lady friend and explained my predicament. As she was out of town, she directed me to the Colonel, who agreed to sign an undertaking that I would return to Juba after my trip. My passports were released to me 2 hours before flight to Addis and I was advised to visit the Interpol office in Lagos to ensure they respond to the correspondences from their South Sudanese counterparts. I had never been so joyous to takeoff on a plane.

 

I arrived in Lagos about 11am on April 3^rd and had no issues passing through Naija immigration. I headed to the Interpol office in Ikoyi directly from the airport and requested to see the 2^nd in command – he was the contact provided by the lawyer. After 2-3 hours of his subordinates contacting the Abuja office – where the Interpol HQ is situated, and major decisions taken – I deduced the following:

·       No one at Nigerian Interpol was aware of any dispatch sent to their South Sudan counterparts regarding missing passports, let alone mine.

·       The passport office in Ikoyi, situated next door to the Interpol office, did not report my passport missing either.

·       After a thorough search they confirmed receipt of the two messages from the South Sudan Interpol, though no one bothered to respond. Here’s the sliding doors moment: if the Colonel wasn’t at the IGP’s office that day and didn’t alert me to Interpol issue, I coulda been arrested and spent weeks in jail while the South Sudanese authorities waited for non-existent feedback from Nigerian Interpol.

 

Before I was directed to make a statement and allowed to depart, the Nigerian Interpol contact assured me there was no case against me, and insisted I provide his contact details to the South Sudanese authorities should they need to reach him directly. Good thing too because it’s been over 2 months since I returned to Juba and I am sure the Nigerian Interpol office has yet to formally respond to the enquiries from South Sudan.

 

Since my return to Juba in the second week of April, I have travelled outta the country twice but haven’t encountered any issues. Prior to this incident, only the airline and support staff at the Juba International Airport knew me. Now, even the security personnel greet me warmly. A pretty female police officer even flirted with me and “threatened” to handcuff me on her day off. Ooooh behave.

 

All’s well that ends well, right? Erm, let’s just say my experiences haven’t converted me to a Pejorist, but, as a precaution, I am gonna empty my Juba bank account in case it gets frozen.

 

Tot ziens and God bless.