Christmas 'chopping' in Nigeria
2000-12-20 18:25
Lagos - As Christmas approaches and thoughts elsewhere turn to biblical events and Christmas trees, long-suffering Nigerians batten down for the festive period.
In Lagos and other urban centres, the arrival of Yuletide celebrations means an increase in thefts and robberies and, with it, a rise in extortion at checkpoints around the cities.
In Nigerian English, the verb "to chop" means both "to eat" and "to corruptly enrich oneself".
And in the heat of the December rush to Christmas, the widespread activity known as "chopping" snowballs.
"Happy Christmas," says a policeman at a barricade on a Lagos street, smiling slightly menacingly as he leans in through a carelessly lowered car window.
For December, a daily "Happy Christmas" has replaced the once weekly "Happy Weekend" and, like its regular equivalent, means hand over 10, 20 or 50 naira (8-40 cents), as a "dash" to be allowed through the barricade.
Normally somnolent road traffic police are now bustling with zeal, threatening tickets for all manner of offences unless they receive a "dash" to settle the complaints at a lower cost to the offender.
"It is true. Traffic stops go up before Christmas," admitted ruefully a senior police official who asked not to be named.
But he defended the extra zeal as an example of how things should be done throughout the year and not something to complain of at Christmas.
It is, of course, not just the police that are more active in the festive run-in.
Criminals too are seeking to put more presents under their Christmas trees.
This year, police spokesperson say, the crime surge is particularly bad because the Christian festival coincides with Eid, the celebration marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
To crime-weary Lagos residents, busily preparing for Christmas themselves, the surge in crime is now "normal," said an article in the Nigerian news magazine Tell this week.
"During this period of the year being a period of festivities ... people tend to try to make money for celebrations, to buy new clothes, buy things for people," the magazine explained.
Lagos State police Chief Mike Okiro told the magazine the police were doing what they could to combat the problem.
"At Christmas crime rates go up... We have the armed robbers who go from house to house... we have the groups who rob (bus) passengers, commuters, we also have people who steal cars," he said.
"We anticipate this so right from September we intensify crime control operations," he added.
Out on the streets, in sweltering heat, sales of Christmas cards, Father Christmas outfits and fake Christmas trees are going strong.
Every opportunity for making money before Christmas is exploited, from a sudden unexplained rise in charges for metered services like electricity and water to a sudden artificially created fuel crisis.
Fuel is often scarce in Nigeria because of an artificial pricing regime but ahead of Christmas shortages always worsen and black market prices skyrocket.
"It is normal," Lola Adeniji, an exasperated civil servant waiting at a filling queue in central Lagos on Monday told AFP. "It is Christmas so they are trying to make their money."
The only problem, she said, "is that they are making it from us. It is hardly the Christmas spirit." - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA