Colourful Trucks & The Police Escort – Nigeria (Pt 2) 01st April 2010

Date: Sunday 11th April, 2010 | Country: Nigeria | 7 Comments »

I know I had already posted the Nigeria update but this is a small addendum to that as by the time I had posted it we still had a few days of travelling.  Along the way to the border amongst all the broken down and smashed vehicles I saw plenty of old school trucks that were painted in all sorts of murals and depictions:

Above: Colourful Nigerian Trucks

Police Escort

Between Onitsha & Enugu heading to the border of Ikom we were driving quite happily until at a village in Onitsha we were stopped at a particular point by a number of heavily armed police officials.  There was plenty of commotion and the locals around were busy shouting at one another and the temperature started to rise in the vehicle!  We were told by the policeman that there had been some fighting ahead into the next village where we were heading towards and it would not be sensible to carry on.  At this point we could stop and wait till the fighting had been officially stopped or carry on with an escort.  We chose the escort and after meeting a few dozen police guys, a few finally decided that one vehicle would lead the way, another would stay behind us.  At this point, I was expecting that we would be driving through a village where one side would be chucking bombs over to the another set of people (ala Spy vs Spy on a larger scale!).  Thankfully we didn’t see anyone on the streets from where the problem ‘allegedly’ was and after being escorted for 15 minutes we were told we could continue by ourselves.  I have to say it was nice as a tourist though to be given this by the police, ok we saw no problems but always good to see that we were not left to our devices.

Above: The Friendly police

Border

Absolutely no issues at the Nigerian border at Ekok, yes there was plenty of administration that had to filled in and duplicated (for no reason) but the people there were friendly and they even gave me a bottle of Top (grapefruit fizzy drink) as a gift…nice!

And Finally…

Saw the most amazing truck in Nigeria delivering the most comfortable beds (I hope) to villages in Nigeria on some very dodgy roads!

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