Sigh...
"Negative propaganda", I love it!
A whole restaurant full of folks, all different shades, robbed at gunpoint right there on Airport Road in Ikeja. Not a "bush bar" but a clean, well-lighted place right next to the Sheraton, all the patrons face down on the floor in fear of their lives. (Tip: Do NOT try to get a good look at the robbers.) Picked the wrong night to eat Chinese...
A pilot shot down like a dog on the Agege Motor Road at the wheel of his new 4X4. Okay, maybe a family quarrel but...
Another pilot shot down on the steps of his dwelling at Christmastime. Turned around to run...
A third one shot by the police at one of their checkpoints. Well, he might have annoyed someone powerful...
These were all locals, if that makes a difference. The last white pilot I knew who died, that was just a road accident that left him with something like 85% third-degree burns. Picked the wrong day to go Hashing...
A white guy out with his family, shot and killed by a drunken policeman for no reason at all. Wrong place at the wrong time...
Kidnappings too many to count. One of my colleagues always would get twitchy listening to rain on a tin roof; he said it reminded him of his three weeks in captivity out there in the mangrove swamps with a gang that would pass the time "...smoking ganja, wrestling and cleaning their weapons."
My last company lost two vans to robbers and had a third one shot full of holes (with me inside!) over just a few years in and around Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos.
Nigerians are lovely folks, the ones who are not reduced to earning a living by criminal means, but they do have this unfortunate reality cut-out, many of them. You or I might see a heaving, stinking mass of humanity, cows, goats, chickens and clapped-out vehicles that failed their Belgian safety inspections (someone not quite right in the head is said to have a "Belgium coconut") to be shipped off to a new life as "Tokunbos" driven by people who got their licences by simple bribery all engaged in a life-or-death struggle to negotiate a traffic roundabout in the blazing noonday sun where a Lagosian just sees "Lagos - Centre of Excellence". Well, for him it is home, after all.
I miss the people but I sure do not miss the danger! It is no use, all this bickering about the true nature of Nigeria: just read the advisories and take due care if you do go. You will probably enjoy it but do not think the fun there to be had always comes without a high price.