Neldrizzy:
Where are those idi'iots who schooled in France

they don't knw Wat is air France cos dey travel by road to france

akpanikpe:

they don't knw Wat is air France cos dey travel by road to france

Lollllllllllll *falls down from cocoa tree* walai this "schooled in France" trend funny die

Pls....I'd a great time in Monaco enough!!!

Its not fair but some Nigerians know how to disgrace their-self sha; greed, greed, greed. Think i am blowing hot and cold, visit the travel section nah!

Jarus:
I have done Air France only once (Edinburgh to Paris, May 2013) and didn't have any negative experience.

However, I don't know Pius to be an alarmist.

Someone gathers the nerve to complain about a racist and obviously bad trend, and all you could do is call him an alarmist. Them born una born suffer walahi!

I symphatize with your sentiment, however; As a Nigerian, Im careful with Nigerians too, unfortunately, few bad apples has spoil the bunch. Dont blame France, they rather be safe than sorry to protect their ppl, unlike Nigeria who dosnt give a damn about their citizens. Why they're not doing same to Ghanaians or Senegalese. Truth hurts, but most of our people are not trustworthy.

What is this one saying , I schooled in "francophone".

Oh buhari, buhari, i remember those days, who da feck is France? Nonsense.

It happened last week on a Virgin flight arriving at Heathrow Airport; they were checking passports at the door.

I guess they do it randomly or maybe on a tip off. The last time I saw it happen was in Paris sometime last year and I have travelled a number of times inbetween on diferent airlines and with no checks.

Op bro, we on student visa are safe in france....

I feel the writer's plight.. And I also think the officers might have their "off" days.. Still flew airfrance recently and final destination was london... None of such passport checks..

Is it by force to fly Air France? It doesn't make sense to call for a ban because of one man who feels he has impeccable writing skills.
Is it the french's fault our people have messed up home and abroad? Who told you its only France that does extra passport check? I have experience this in Madrid, flying Iberia and once on London, flying Virgin Atlantic. Infact the Virgin Atlantic own came with very fierce looking dogs, the way I screamed and jumped when I saw the dogs, one policeman had to catch me before I fell and helped me pass the dogs because of my serious phobia for dogs, esp as I wasn't expecting to see dogs at the foot of the plane.
The policeman said that the dogs didn't bite and they do such things when they have information about something suspicious, it wasn't everytime that this was done! Perhaps there was a suspected drug courier on board.

What about on transiting Istanbul to New York, the airport authorities still carried out interviews and requested for return ticket before I could board a connecting flight!

So before Mr. OP starts to curse and swear at every civil servant trying to earn a living, he should understand why this is done, every country has to protect their borders even if ours doesn't. Besides, the OP failed to mention all he went through boarding the flight from Nigeria! It's like passing the eye of a needle. The most difficult take off point ever!

Pls guys what is the dollar exchange in 9jia now ?

Engen:
By Pius Adesanmi

Putain de merde! I exclaim in absolute contempt as I hand over my passport to the French police officer. That’s an unthinkable vulgarity! It is the father of vulgarities in French, guaranteed to catch the attention of the French policeman who now holds my passport, lost in a few seconds of confusion. His colleagues in the ongoing process of stripping Nigerians of their human dignity also stop sharply in their tracks, all eyes on me. I have them where I want them.

Putain de merde! I exclaim in absolute contempt as I hand over my passport to the French police officer. That’s an unthinkable vulgarity! It is the father of vulgarities in French, guaranteed to catch the attention of the French policeman who now holds my passport, lost in a few seconds of confusion. His colleagues in the ongoing process of stripping Nigerians of their human dignity also stop sharply in their tracks, all eyes on me. I have them where I want them. I want all four French police officers to hear me use a vulgarity that no White French man or woman can get away with using in the presence of a French policeman in the best of circumstances, let alone an African with a black ass getting off the plane - and from Nigeria of all places!

In the thirty seconds of their confusion, I can visualize what is going on in their minds. Their job, to stand right at the door of the plane, look mean and unfriendly, and scrutinize the passports of all passengers arriving from Nigeria, before such passengers proceed to face further humiliation at immigration and passport control, has conditioned them psychologically to face docile, frightful, and suppliant Nigerians pouring out of Air France flights weekly from Abuja or Lagos. Only for this six-foot-two-inch-male to hand over his passport with an air of supreme confidence bordering on intolerable arrogance and to ice that cake of hubris with unbelievable pottymouthed vulgarity.

What to do with this pompous Nigerian? Well, he did say “putain de merde”, right? It’s not just that he said it. It’s the way he said it: 100% Parisian French, complete with the accent. Nobody says it like that without being in perfect command of the French language, culture, and civilization. Nobody says it like that without having lived in Paris, without having crawled the streets of Barbes and Chateau d’Eau, without having been a habitual crawler on the platforms of Les Halles. This arrogant chap is one of us. He knows us inside out. He must have once lived here with us. He is us. He is doing this deliberately to provoke a reaction.

If this is the thinking of these French police officers, they are absolutely right on the money. Unfortunately for them, the passport I present while spewing my vulgarity is Canadian, not Nigerian. It works! I can sense their disappointment, their frustration. The only one who has dared to confront them has to go and present the passport of a fellow Western power! I can visualize the one million and one things they would have done to me if I was travelling on my Nigerian passport. Of course, my intention, the moment I saw them on stepping out of the plane, is to hide behind the strong arms of Canada and fight for my Nigerian humanity and dignity. Those of us who live transnational lives often have to do that – much to our displeasure. I shouldn’t have needed the might and power of Canada to shield me from the scorn, humiliation, and racism of these French police officers. My Nigerian passport should have been enough to do the magic. And that is why I am writing this piece in anger.

The officer looks at my Canadian passport, scrutinizes the photo in it to make sure it’s me – black folk have this annoying habit of all looking alike, all looking the same – and smiles in helpless submission to the power of the Western essence of that passport. Then he asks a few friendly questions about my time in France. For a Nigerian, your French isn’t something one encounters every day, he says. How did you learn French? When did you leave France for Canada? Then he waves me on with wide smile. I leave after registering my protest over what he and his colleagues are doing. I am not fooled by the friendliness. I fear for my compatriots still waiting on the line with Nigeria’s notorious passport behind me. Once the good behaviour and amiable mien imposed on these police officers by Canada wears off, they will snarl at first sight of the next Nigerian passport and return to character. They will resume hostilities. Whoever steps up after me with a Nigerian passport will pay the price of my rudeness. Transferred aggression.

Above is a summary of what happened as I stepped off the plane from Abuja last week to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I was on my way back from a busy week of lectures in Nigeria and was going to take a connecting flight to Ottawa. As the plane taxied to a stop at the gate, the captain announced that there would be an additional police check and passport control just outside the door of the plane. That was the beginning of my anger. I hadn’t flown Air France since the 1990s. In fact, the last time I did business with Air France was back in 1998 and that demeaning, dehumanizing, and patently racist policy of an extra passport check on passengers arriving from Nigeria had just begun. It was a fallout of the draconian racist policies of a French politician and government official called Charles Pasqua who pretty much spent the 1990s hunting and hounding African immigrants and enacting racist policy and racist policy when he served as Minister of Interior. Nicolas Sarkozy’s subsequent hounding of Africans and immigrants – who he called scum – was a Pasqua hangover. The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his loquacious daughter are boy scouts in the province of French racism and intolerance. The real deal was Charles Pasqua and his 1990s laws.

How the French moved from their usual suspects, their usual victims – Malian, Burkinabe, and Senegalese immigrants – to focus on Nigeria as an even greater object of their scorn, contempt, and racism beats me. But the profiling and extra checks began in the 1990s. Since I stopped flying Air France in 1998, all my trips to France, all my holidays, all my summer writing retreats in Paris had been from Canada or the United States, so I had no way of knowing that the practice of profiling Nigerians arriving on Air France from Abuja or Lagos had continued all these years. It was in Abuja that I first got an inkling of what lay ahead. Boarding Air France from Nigeria is like attempting to clear security and see President Obama in the White House. In fact, it is easier to see Obama as you can always scale the fence of the White House these days. Air France officials check and recheck your passport. Layers and layers of checks. Just before you board, they queue you up again and bring electronic passport scanners in big boxes looking like INEC machines. Checks, checks, and checks. They already got on my temper in Abuja. Only to arrive in France and have stern police officers waiting right outside of the door of the plane for – alas – another layer of dehumanizing passport control. Mind you, the passengers whose final destination is France are still going ahead to immigration and passport control!

Just a week earlier, I had used this same airport on my way from Canada to Nigeria. When my plane landed from Montreal, nobody did any additional passport check. Nobody was waiting at the door of the plane. I just entered and went on to the gate of my connecting flight to Abuja – unharrassed, unmolested. Seven days later, I am coming from Abuja – same me, same passports – and everything changes. Checks, checks, checks. What has changed?

That extra passport check of passengers arriving from Nigeria – after all the pre-boarding checks and verification in Nigeria and the regular customs and immigration check they will still face in France - by French police is a flagrant act of racist humiliation and discrimination that should be resisted by the Nigerian Government. That nonsense started in the 1990s and I am surprised that the Nigerian Government has allowed it to last this long. Part of my frustration with the Nigerian authorities is that they don’t always know when and how to wield Nigeria’s immense economic weight against misbehaving European powers. France is of zero economic benefit to Nigeria. How many Nigerian businesses are in France? How many Nigerian conglomerates and multinational corporations are in France? Whatever we make from trade with France is guguru and epa money. On the contrary, Nigeria is of massive economic benefit to France. Total is in Nigeria. Peugeot is in Nigeria. Schlumberger is in Nigeria. So many French corporations are in Nigeria making a killing. Air France operates weekly flights to Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt.

There is nothing France can do to Nigeria because she is of little or no economic value to Nigeria. The sky will not fall if Nigerians don’t consume brie, camembert and other French cheese (we have wara). The sky will not fall if Nigerians don’t consume French wine (which they know zero about anyway. A Nigerian pretending to know French wine is usually just forming). The sky will not fall if we don’t drive Peugeot (Japanese cars are there to ensure that we don’t miss Peugeot). On the contrary, if Nigeria sneezes, France will catch an economic cold. We are that important to the economy of France. In essence, France is in no position to humiliate and discriminate against Nigerians with that nonsensical extra passport check by police waiting outside the door of a plane in Paris – creating the impression that they are about to sort through a bunch of potential and actual criminals. What sort of profiling is this in the 21st century?

I wrote an article praising Viola Onwuliri a few months ago. Minister Onwuliri was handling career profilers of Nigeria at the international level in a way that made one proud to be a Nigerian. I even temporarily suspended my remembrance of her ignominious role in Occupy Nigeria because of the way she was doing the business of Nigeria at Foreign Affairs. The Ambassadors of India and Egypt will not forget her quickly. I think it is time for the Ambassador of France in Nigeria to be summoned to Foreign Affairs for an encounter with whoever has succeeded Viola Onwuliri. A clear, muscular, and unambiguous message needs to be sent to the Elysee in Paris. The message should be backed with threats. If the French do not stop their misbehaviour, we must threaten to ban Air France and even ban Total and Peugeot from operating in Nigeria. Nothing is more important than the human dignity of the Nigerian citizen. If the French state cannot respect that, they have no business doing business in Nigeria and raking in billions.

A note to the Nigerians who have been patronizing Air France since the 1990s. So, this practice has continued since the 1990s when I last flew Air France and una jus keep quiet dey tolerate am? This is why Nigerians dey taya me. This followership thing. This is why your rulers get away with everything they do to you. You just keep taking it. You take it from your rulers. You take it from Air France. You take it from South African Airways. You take it from Egypt Air. That is why Egypt Air felt emboldened to maltreat that Nigerian boy until Viola Onwuliri stepped in to deal with them. If, tomorrow, Air Rwanda starts to profile and maltreat you, you will take it from them.

Yeah, I know. I’ve heard it. If our rulers weren’t as useless and irresponsible as to kill Nigerian Airways, if we had our own national carrier, bla bla, and bla. That, my friend, is a yeye argument. That your system killed Nigerian Airways is no excuse for you to be treated anyhow by other airlines taking your hard-earned money. If they treat your money with dignity, they and the governments which own them must treat your body and person with dignity. End of story!


Source: www.nigeriatell.com/news/pius-adesanmi-ban-air-france-from-nigeria-now

NIGERIA the sleeping giant....I've always said WE not our leaders are our own problems...WE not our leaders are the corrupt ones...even the American president can not easily bribe his way out from an American citizen so he behaves himself but an average Nigerian will be more than willing to be bribed to allow anything go...thinking that's smartness....only God knows when we will wake up.

Johniyke2flex:


Someone gathers the nerve to complain about a racist and obviously bad trend, and all you could do is call him an alarmist. Them born una born suffer walahi!

You obviously misread my post.

If you read me well, you will know I even vouched for him.

In any case the writer/ person involved is a phone call away. So it's not distant knowledge.

Putain de merde!,ok now,I have learnt a new one today,moderators on NL go hear am from me soon. Putain de merde!

Their country, their law.

You don't like it? Then take your business/money elsewhere. That'll show them.

I can never understand pompous travelers.

Martin Luther King never had to resort to cursing to feel powerful.

The same thing happened to people on the Air France flight I took from Lagos to Paris on the way to Chicago . Surprisingly , only young Nigerians went thru it. Was surprised and no one of these guys protested. I did not say anything since I was left alone by the police officers in the plane. Such blatant discriminatory policy must be challenged.

otokx:
Hope you sent a copy to our foreign affairs ministry; Lufthansa has always been my preferred airline though, yet to hear any ish on profiling with them.

Lufthansa Airline is ok. Their own is going thru checkpoints in Frankfurt or Munich is very stressful because they will almost strip you naked due to the terrorism stuff. The worst airline to deal with is El Al airline . The isreal airline to Tel Aviv is like going for job interview in a global 500 company. Always challenge them and they will tell you is because of terrorism and that is completely understandable.

Tobb79:
TRUE TALK but Nigerians are cowards from d leader to the follower

You are the greatest fool i have ever seen.

Op, abeg I graduated in france Next Year , oh sorry, I will graduate in france Last Year.. Well, I don't know what am saying... But I schooled in Francophone...

Bia Kedu ife nwanna nka na su ? O si no puta je muo ya .. Mba oo nka ekwe ro m'agu. Gwa nu ya, ha dezie ya n'ingrish. O nka k'am ma..

E get as e be o! Mr @Engen, hope you made the french policemen realise you were also Nigerian? It's a pity that the good have always suffered at the discount of the very bad people. If some fraudulent people didn't sneak into France to live a life of crime just like they do here in the UK, innocent travellers won't have to pass through "Police Humiliation". those illegal immigrants now apply for asylum here and are granted. Meanwhile, those who sincerely need asylum are vehemently denied it. These bad people ferment trouble everywhere they go and don't even mind going to jail.
Banning an airline or organisation is not the best approach. Both governments involved should have talks and resolve the matters-arising and if the talks prove abortive, then Nigeria can also subscribe to the "tit-for-tat" technique. Make we take the same cup wey dem use measure garri for us measure back give dem.
French citizens or citizens of any defaulting countries should be subjected to the very same treatment mented on Nigerians. I believe strongly in fairness and equality. Do us, we do you back!

I honestly can't say which is worse, the pedigree of comments posted in this thread or the ill treatment we receive home and abroad.
I guess y'all too busy making jokes about this.... Once upon a time it was a Nigerian brutally assaulted and killed in Spain by immigration officers, a Nigerian boy maltreated by Egyptian air workers. Keep making silly joke and one day will read of your demise at the hands of Togolese Immigration officers... We'll just laugh over it.
Keep making jokes and sarcastic comments.
Damn these corrupt cougers!!!.

2legit2qwt:
You might as well ban all airlines because i doubt any country respect the Nigerian passport these days.

If Nigeria has anything to offer the world other than terrorism, fraud, (any negatives here) I doubt anyone would disrespect the passport, we would be idolized instead.

You earn respect not demand it so i'd say, lets ban all the leaders and bad followers before placing a ban on Air France.

U have a point. But with da fire dis guy is spitting,probably Air France own too much bdat... Anyway wetin consine me, I don't even know da way to the airport in my state of residence. The closest I've been to a plane is seeing a plane's stature in front of air force barracks!!!

p-sure or idonbilivit

Our problem is corruption, even seme bother, after you stamp with 100 naira then Benin custom will demand 500 naira before he will stamp ur passport, very bad.

Can some1 plz tel me where did this statement com from? The phrase ; I SCHOOLED IN FRANCE
Please and please

merieam16:
All those who school'd in france...confirm dis

I school in france; but who is Air France? Is he d ceo of a car company?

@OP i fink its a nu security obligation, cause same happened at amsterdam where i was transiting to YYZ pearson...

We are on our own. Nigerian Govt no go do anything. If them like make them kill us sef. But, if you treat their loot anyhow(South Africa) them go raise diplomatic tension to code red.