Seme corruption market

Seme is one of the busiest borders between Nigeria and its neighbours. It is also touted as one of the routes most banned items illegally enter Nigeria. EMMANUEL ADENIYI was at the border and witnessed a rare display of corruption by Beninese police and immigration, who station touts along checkpoints to extort money from travellers. He writes that the corrupt activities going on on the Beninese part of the border cannot, in any way, be compared with the N20 kickback oft collected by men of the Nigeria Police.

ADVERTISEMENT

Being a Nigerian/Beninese settlement with heavy presence of police and immigration officers of both countries, most of the oft heard stories about Seme border are on the corrupt activities of men of the Nigeria Police and immigration, but little is known about the extortion of travellers entering Republique du Benin from Nigeria.
The extortion commenced immediately I crossed the Nigeria’s part of the popular Seme border to the Republique du Benin’s, where I was greeted by crapulous, stern looking middle-aged men, also known as Kelebe by the Beninese people.
The stench of their breath was overpoweringly horrible – it reeked of tobacco. With their bloodshot eyes and icy gaze which glowered at me menacingly, a frisson of fear was sent down my spine, and my mind raced as I tried to figure out what I had done wrong.
No matter how smart you are, you can never escape them. At every checkpoint of about six police posts, you are spotted afar off by Kelebe, who obviously work for the Beninese police and immigration to extort naira from travellers, mainly Nigerians.
“D’où êtes-vous? Qui êtes-vous?” one of the men, dressed in a yellow and black spotted ankara, asked in French. He wanted to know who I was, where I was coming from and where I was heading to.
With my voice recorder on to record the conversation, I went blank, as my smattering French failed me, wondering how to communicate with him in a language that appeared tongue-twisting.
I eventually replied in English, but there was no response. I spoke to him in Yoruba, the man merely made a gesture to his colleague standing a few metres away – looking for victims to prey on – to come and see “ara won”, meaning one of them in English.
He even looked fiercer and blustered threats judging by the wave of his hand and the raging squawks of disgust his code-mixed expressions carried. I was later told he was code-mixing French, Fon and Yoruba. In fact, if looks could kill, I would be dead by the dagger his eyes threw at me.
Any person carrying a Nigerian passport, or any Nigerian traveller, as I was made to know much later, is branded “one of them” – an expression, which was said to have been coined by the Beninese locals to describe Nigerians, who wave after wave, visit or reside in the Republique du Benin.
I later realised that some of the men understood Yoruba perfectly, but often pretended not to, so as to confuse whoever  was “arrested” by them, knowing very well that the more confused their victims, the more money they would bilk out of them.
My international passport and identity card were of no use to them, and but for sheer fate, they would have seized and probably torn the passport as I heard they often did.
While all attempts to speak with the Beninese police/immigration officers at the first police post met a brick wall, as the officers looked away abandoning me to my fate, I eventually parted with a thousand naira before I was allowed to proceed on the journey, only to experience the same cycle of skullduggery at the second, third, fourth and the fifth checkpoints.
The last checkpoint, where a Kelebe spoke French all through sent me wondering whether the journey was worthwhile after all. “Vous ne pouvez pas entrer. Pour participer, apporter N2,000, ou mieux encore retourner d’où vous venez,” the man had said.
A Nigerian female student, who would not disclose her name and school, had assisted to interpret what he said in French. She, too, had parted with some money, even though she brought out her identity card and showed it to them. The Kelebe-burden, according to her, had said in French that I should go back to wherever I was coming from if I was unwilling to pay him N2,000. The rest is history.
Nigerian Embassy in Cotonou
At the Nigerian Embassy in Cotonou visited by this reporter to get the side of the embassy concerning the complaints and allegations of Nigerians residing in the country, the atmosphere that hovered over the palatial compound of the embassy was not friendly at all.
From the attitude of the gateman, who told this reporter brusquely that the staff of the embassy were on break, the complaints of most of the people who spoke with Sunday Tribune and their allegation of neglect by the embassy appeared real, because even the two Beninese soldiers guarding the embassy showed conviviality in their interaction with this reporter than the embassy officials whose nonchalance (superciliousness?) blinded them to the maltreatment of their countrymen.
This reporter was later attended to by a Fehintola Adebowale, one of the embassy staff. His frigidity belied every air of importance and concern that he put up as he took this reporter to his office refusing to grant interview. He merely asked him to write down his questions and contact, promising to reply to them the following week, which he never did.
Returning home
Determined not to fester the Seme corruption market while departing the Republique du Benin by not giving a dime to anybody at the border, the Kelebe men, whose hearts of steel are/were impervious to feelings and my cry of not having enough to transport myself back home, still succeeded in extorting money from me and depleted my transport budget, which almost left me stranded on the streets of Lagos. Even a fly cannot escape them unnoticed.
Nevertheless, stepping my feet on the Nigerian soil bestowed on me a sense of overwhelming peace and calmness, though horrified by my experience at the hands of Seme touts, tales of highhandedness of the Beninese police and immigration against Nigerians in the country, and ultimately the unfriendly posture of the Nigerian Embassy in the Republic de Benin.
Anyway, one is happy to be back at home, where there is no fear of Kelebe extortion or harassment of any kind.