Post by Zahra (@perpetualoptimist)

How to Lose an Investor Before Sunrise

Why Won’t My Mind Shut Up?
Holiday Series | Episode 1: Scene 1 – Touchdown. 4:00 a.m.
Landed in Nigeria at 4:00 a.m. with the four who still call me Mum.
Excited to be home.
Excited to see family.
Excited to start their holiday.
I couldn’t wait to see Nigeria through their eyes again.
The flight landed exactly on schedule.
Everything after that… didn’t.
We walked to baggage reclaim expecting to be on our way in twenty minutes.
Instead, we waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The luggage came out like the new naira notes during the Emefiele era.
One suitcase appeared.
Everyone got excited.
Then…
Nothing.
Twenty minutes later another one surfaced.
Hope returned.
Then vanished again.
Every time you thought, “Finally, they’re coming,” the carousel gently reminded you that optimism is a dangerous thing around these parts.
Somewhere between suitcase number three and suitcase number four, a random thought crossed my mind.

“By the way… where is Emefiele these days?”

Anyway…
Another suitcase appeared.
Then another pause.
Nearly two hours later, we’d finally collected everything.
By then, the excitement had evaporated.
My four were tired, hungry and fed up.
This wasn’t the welcome home I’d imagined.
We stacked everything onto trolleys, headed for the exit and thought,
“At last.”
Not quite.
Now it was time to unload every suitcase AGAIN into an X-ray machine.
Walk to the other side.
Watch our neatly stacked luggage emerge in one untidy heap unto the floor l-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y.
Then reload every single bag onto the trolleys.
A complimentary CrossFit session with every international arrival.
While waiting, I asked one of the baggage handlers why it takes so long.
His answer was simple.
It was the process.
The luggage is brought from the aircraft to the baggage hall, but there aren’t enough handlers to unload it quickly. So they unload a few bags, stop, unload a few more, stop again… and that’s why the carousel seems to have a mind of its own.
Then it dawned on me.
Ours was the first international flight of the day.
There wasn’t a queue of earlier arrivals.
There weren’t multiple flights competing for space.
Everything we’d just experienced was for a single aircraft.
Another handler explained that when the carousel is full, no more bags can be added. Sometimes they remove bags that have already gone around several times to make room for the next batch, but passengers complain that their luggage has disappeared from the belt.
So the solution is…
Make everyone wait.
Eventually, we made it out.
Or so I thought.
We reached the car park exit.
Dad handed the attendant his car park ticket. I look on puzzled.
The machine calculated how long he’d been parked.
The screen displayed exactly how much he owed.
The attendant looked at the screen…
…then told him exactly what the screen had just told all of us.
He paid him.
He scanned the ticket.
The barrier opened.
And we drove away wondering whether the barrier was simply waiting for his blessing.

I laughed.

Then stopped laughing.

Because this is the very first experience many visitors have of Nigeria.
Before they taste our food.
Before they experience our warmth.
Before they discover the ingenuity, resilience and kindness of Nigerians.
They experience queues.
Delays.
Confusion.
Processes that seem to exist simply because they’ve always existed.
For my four, who arrived full of excitement, Nigeria had defeated them before sunrise.
And that’s the saddest part.
Nigeria isn’t broken.
Nigerians certainly aren’t.
But too many of our systems behave as though the customer’s time has no value.
We often talk about attracting investment.
Boosting tourism.
Changing perceptions.
Yet the first lesson many visitors receive isn’t about our hospitality, resilience and beauty.
It’s about our processes.
Somewhere between the aircraft door and the airport exit, excitement quietly turns into exhaustion.
That’s not an infrastructure problem.
That’s a design problem.
Good design starts with a simple question:
“Why do we do it this way?”
Then asking it again.
And again.
Until every unnecessary step disappears.
Because the Giant of Africa deserves a better opening scene.

To be continued…

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