Gerd Meuer mit Nobelpreisträger Wole Soyinka
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White Father Christmas in Nigeria

   Children, did you know that many, many years ago your white-haired Uncle Oyingbo Peppe also played Father Chrristmas in dis same Nigeria? I hope you will all be very patient since this story is going to be a rather longish one. You will remember that Uncle was once the correspondent for German Radio in West Africa, telling his Oyingbo brothers and sisters about ‘the strange ways of Africans’.
    And since in the early eighties of the last cenutry – you were not even born then ! – water and ‘tricity were already in short supply in our beautiful city of Lagos, Uncle used to spend many a night in an OASIS by the name of ‘MILE TWO CAMP, which was the transit camp of that big German company by the name of Julius BERGER, where those Oyingbos used to spend a night before flying off for vacation to Germany, after having built the Nigerian autobahns, airports and dams.
    The advantage of that Camp was that it always had water and ‘tricity, which was no small feat for a busy radio correspondent then. So in 1983, a few days before Christmas I again spent a few days in that Camp, which was run by one Frau Kern. It was also the time when Berger was heavily enaged in laying the foundations for the new capital of Nigeria in ABUJA. And your curious Uncle wanted to go there and have a look how work was progressing.
   That proved to be easy since at the time BERGER had a daily flight of one of its own planes to Abuja, and so Mrs. Kern told me I could fly next day on their plane. BUT, would I, please do her a favour... would I please take the Christmas present for her husband to ABUJA? Mr. Kern was the Chief Accountant on that huge building site that was the new capital of Nigeria. Sure I would! 
   Mrs. Kern told me that the ‘present’ would be ready early the next morning, and that that a driver would take me to the airport. In fact, next morning Mrs. Kern handed me the ‘present’ for her husband, and she begged me to ‘take extra good care of that present!” 
    The bag was very, very heavy, and I suspected it contained a very heavy piece of ‘airport art’, an entire family of carved elephants, which Oyingbo Peppes like so much... '
    And off I was with my own personal driver, who drove me not only to the airport but straight to the BERGER plane. 
    No controls whatsoever!
    After a short flight we land on the brand-new landing-strip at ABUJA. Hardly have I disembarked from the small two-engine propeller plane that a car approaches at full speed: “Are you Mr. Moya?” Yes I am. And off we are at full, no, crazy speed to the nascent capital, at full spead into the driveway of the BERGER compound. A door opens, Mr. Kern greets me, no, commands that I enter the building IMMEDIATELY, kia-kia; whisks me into his office, locks the door from inside behind me, and sits down in his big office-seat:
    “Ouch!”
    “Where is my Christmas present???”, is his barracks-like command.
    “Here it is Mr. Kern.”
    ”And so you have done it!”
I have done WHAT? And only then I am  being ‘enlightened’, when Mr. Kern opens that heavy bag, unpacks, and lifts heavy bundles of NAIRA notes… So that is Mr. Kern’s ‚Christmas present’ … “Sure that is my Christmas present...”
    „Mr. Meuer, You dont seem to know what kind of mess we have been in here for days... the banks have been on strike here for days, Christmas is fast approaching and we have no cash to pay our workers, who want to go home to their families for Christmas, especially those from the East. We were going to have a REVOLUSHON on our hands! You have saved us!“
    Not having had the leastest of clues Uncle had transported millions of Naira of pay money... because nobody suspected that that OYINGBO was doing just that.
    It was a clever ruse since only a few weeks earlier a BERGER helicopter had flown a ton of cash to the WARRI and SAPELE building sites, and once the helicopter had landed, it had been greeted by a group of heavily armed men who had made away with the metal canteens containing all that money.
   But who would suspect that a white German Father Christmas – a naive correspondent – would be carrying that kind of ‚Christmas present’ in his sack !!!

PS: The BERGER people have always denied and keep denying that this ever happened...