Every Day Is for the Thief

“I have mentally rehearsed a reaction for a possible encounter with such corruption at the airport in Lagos. But to walk in off a New York street and face a brazen demand for a bribe: that is a shock I am ill-prepared for.”

Nigeria is rife with corruption at all levels, and the narrator spends much of his time in the country puzzling out the effect that this has on its people. That the corruption extends to the Nigerian consulate offices in the US troubles him, as it indicates how thoroughly grift and bribery has become a part of Nigerian life.

“I have taken into myself some of the assumptions of life in a Western democracy—certain ideas about legality, for instance, certain expectations of due process—and in that sense I have returned a stranger.”

One of the tensions in the narrator’s journey is his growing understanding that he no longer belongs in Nigeria, and this passage is the first example of that. His expectations for behavior have been influenced by the unspoken mores of the US, but Nigeria’s economic and democratic development has different mores, which shock him upon his return there.

“Precisely because everyone takes a shortcut, nothing works and, for this reason, the only way to get anything done is to take another shortcut.”

Nigeria’s corruption has a top-down effect on the people who live there. Because their government, international businesses, and local authorities take advantage of them, they must work outside the system to get by. This extends into the lives of every citizen, and the effect is that society is full of chaotic interactions between people trying to circumvent the official order.