Aah Lagos, and especially the freight apron. I was Lagos route manager for IML in the late 70’s and had a target of two, yep two, 707s a day. The reason was of course that Nigeria had oil and was expanding at a huge rate. The port of Apapa was quoting 365 day demurrage for shipping (and this was AFTER you had bribed the harbourmaster) so everything went by air.
I was running 707’s, Dc8’s, Brits, 44s and even the odd DC7 and I still had a waitlist of cargo. Backloads used to be skins from Kano (until one load rotted the floor of a 707), cobalt from Lubumbashi or occasionally cucumbers from Almeria. With the build up in tempo the Lagos apron got congested so the NAA introduced “slot times” which of course got shorter and shorter. At one stage we had TMAC 44’s offloading by taxying forward and effectively dropping the load off the tail. Then one airline (Ostend based with an old Brit) decided to nick someone else’s slot and all hell broke loose. NAA then brought in the “pre-clearance” system where you could not export the goods until the paperwork had customs cleared. Absolute bedlam especially when I had a 24 tonne load that did not preclear as expected and ended up in Tenerife instead of Warri.
The Nigerian partner of IML was IMNL and they had this guest house for Uk based expats. My first morning there the houseboy did me wonderful mince on toast. That night for dinner we had Spaghetti Bolognese. Next day we had curried mince and so on. The only thing the guy could cook was mince.
And I remember sitting in the jump seat of a Tradewinds 707 in the early dawn as we were awaiting customs to wake up, enjoying a coldie or two, when the lower rear cargo door light came on. Some enterprising chappie was trying to heist the belly hold contents. Captain had not shut down so he just throttled up a bit and , well, you get the picture.
Five years later I moved to Lagos for a year with DHL and when I went into the freight shed to find something or other I saw to my amazement my own handwriting on shipments that had been sitting there all that time. But DHL Nigeria… that’s another story!
This thread should also run on Freight Dogs. I think half the loadmasters in the world probably have some tale to tell of Nigeria