I claimed my bags and proceeded to customs, expecting to flash my visitor’s visa and pass through to find a taxi to my hotel. Instead, a team of uniformed agents sitting at a table asked to see my bags, which I assumed they would rummage through to make sure I carried nothing illegal!
One of the agents looked over my bags lying on the table but didn’t open them. He then looked up at me with a big smile and said, “Your bags are fine. Now, do you have any chocolate for me?”
I was shocked and answered his question literally by saying, “I’m sorry, but I have no chocolate.” He nodded, but kept staring and smiling at me. Then, I realized that by “chocolate”, the agent meant any kind of favor.
I discreetly handed him a $20 bill, grabbed my bags, and went to find a taxi. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time a public official in Nigeria asked me for a bribe and it won’t be the last.
In fact, according to a recent UN report, 15% of all Nigerian citizens in 2023 encountered and paid one or more public officials an average of 5.1 bribes, totaling 87 million bribes over just one year!
To counter this culture of corruption permeating Nigeria’s political institutions, Rev. Leonard Okonkwo passionately works to instill a better ethos into a new generation of Servant Leaders (Mt. 20:26).
Every Thursday, our boarding students gather in chapel for an intercessory prayer service called “Ebube” in the Igbo tongue. Since purity of soul makes prayer more efficacious, Rev. Leo exhorts his protégés to make sacrifices for each other in preparation for their weekly group prayer.
Some children prepare by giving their Wednesday daily meal to a fellow student. “When I was in SS-2, I gave my yam porridge to a JSS-1 student, who was crying and hungry on a day when our meal was very small”, said Ibe Saraphina, a recent SS-3 graduate.
Such practices mold our students into real leaders who would never ask for or accept a bribe as a condition for doing or not doing their job in accord with whatever position or rank they may attain in society.
To be fair, petty bribe requests by low level customs agents, like I encountered at the Lagos airport, are only a symptom of much larger scale corruption and graft by high level officials in Nigeria.
For instance, the recently elected President of Nigeria was criticized for acquiring a new $100M presidential airplane for official travel when millions of Nigerians are literally starving due to food scarcity and hyperinflation.
Whoever corruption comes from, it always compounds the plight of poor people and sets a bad example. “When parents or public officials ignore the circumstances of alarming poverty, they pass harmful attitudes and habits onto the next generation”, Rev. Leo laments.
For this reason, HEAL pushes students to pray and make sacrifices for each other so all of society will benefit when they become future leaders in whatever position, high or low, public or private, they may end up.
To continue forming children for Christ, we must meet the heavy financial demands of operating our two schools – about $800,000 annually or $2,000 per child per year or $5 per child per day.
Unlike the customs agent at the airport, who asked for a bribe to NOT do his job, I only ask for your best gift so that we may keep doing ours.
May the good Lord bless and keep you!