THE NIGERIAN QUEUE OLYMPICS

 

I was thinking this morning.... I was to make a long-haul trip recently and arrived at the airport early enough. After about an hour of waiting, an announcement was made that pre-boarding was commencing. To my surprise, I noticed quite a number of people requesting assistance. It was a long line of wheelchairs. “What's going on here?” I wondered.

After those requiring assistance had been pre-boarded, the rest of us were called for general boarding. Chai! It was as if somebody had fired the starting pistol for the Nigerian Queue Olympics.

Immediately, there was a rush towards the boarding gate. One queue became two. Two became three, with each branch claiming to be the authentic queue. Eventually, when the genuine queue was established, Phase Two began, Creative Queue Jumping.

A young man walked straight ahead of me, entered the line and announced, “She's my mother,” pointing to the woman in front of me. Ah! What could I say? Will I separate mother and child?

I was still shaking my head when another person entered behind me. “We're together,” she said. Together ke? From what I had observed, their “togetherness” started only about twenty minutes earlier when they struck up a casual conversation. Apparently, friendship in Nigeria now comes with queue-jumping privileges. At that point, I realised that queue jumping in Nigeria is not an act. It is a skill.

There is also the famous “I was here before” technique. The person disappears for thirty minutes, returns and expects the queue to remember him.

And my favourite is the "wayo" technique where  the person stands beside the queue pretending not to be joining. Small small, he moves forward until, by divine arrangement, he has entered the queue.

Chai! Na only VAR remain.

Later, while waiting to board the aircraft, I noticed one of those who had earlier used a wheelchair get up and walk briskly towards the restroom. For a moment, my Nigerian mind went straight to suspicion: Ah-ah! So na strategy? But I cautioned myself. Not every disability is visible, and some people who require airport assistance can still walk short distances.

Still, the whole experience got me thinking. Why are we always in such a hurry to get ahead? At traffic lights, someone must squeeze past everybody. At supermarket checkouts, somebody suddenly has “only one item.” Even in church, when they say, “Please come out row by row,” one brother from the back is already receiving revelation to move forward.

But a queue is actually one of society's simplest tests of character. Waiting your turn simply says, “Your time is as valuable as mine.” It says, You came before me, so you should be served before me.

Perhaps the gold medal in the Nigerian Queue Olympics should therefore go, not to the person who finds the smartest way to reach the front, but to the one who patiently waits his turn. Because as we say for Warri: “If everybody wan enter door at once, na doorway go suffer.”

Sometimes, the fastest way for everybody to move forward is simply for everyone to wait their turn. 1 Corinthians 14:40 says “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

So next time you see me patiently standing in a Nigerian queue, abeg don't mistake it for weakness. I'm training for the Olympics. And this time, I intend to win gold without jumping the queue.

Stay hopeful. God's got our back.

Happy Sunday!

......Just the thoughts of a certain Wey Mey