Across Borders
A Journey from Lagos to Togo
I think that travel is never just movement across geography; it is movement across time, across layers of self, across the deep memory we carry as children of the continent. When I travelled to Togo, it was not simply an act of leisure or tourism. It was a reminder that the act of crossing borders in Africa is far more than stamps on paper or the ticking of another country off a list -it is a confrontation with our colonial inheritance, with the fractures and continuities of our people.
It began with an invitation from my friend George, a Beninese brother who once worked in Nigeria with the Goethe-Institut and now lives in Togo. On a Monday morning, I left my Lagos home at 9:00 AM and made my way to Mile 2 motor park, the liminal space where journeys in our part of the world often begin. I paid ₦20,000 for a seat to Cotonou. The waiting was over two hours long. I’d say waiting is part of African travel (don’t ask me why).
The road to the Seme border was littered with checkpoints. The Nigerian police dominated them, but I also encountered the Nigerian Customs Service, Immigration, the Drug Law Enforcement Agency, and the Army. At each point, the driver had to “settle” the officers — a ritual that has become so ingrained it feels like part of the ticket price. I consider this a living echo of an extractive order left behind by colonial systems.
An NDLEA officer looked at my passport, studied my face, and told me I didn’t “look Nigerian.” He asked where I was from and when my reply revealed we shared the same ethnic group, his suspicion softened into kinship -though not enough to forego asking for “something small.” I obliged and continued the journey. This moment, fleeting as it was, reminded me that in the colonial carve-up, we became strangers at borders drawn through our own homelands.
At the border itself, I had to disembark to have my passport stamped. That cost me ₦5,000 on both the Nigerian and Beninese sides. I also had to acquire a yellow card (₦5,000) and pay ₦3,000 for vaccinations — meningitis, yellow fever, and a third I can’t recall.
From Cotonou, I took a cab to Grand-Popo for CFA 8,000 -a fare I later learned was inflated. Then came the four-hour ride into Togo. At the Togolese border, CFA 2,000 secured my passport stamp on each side. George met me in Lome, and we rode on a motorbike to his home, a place embraced by the gentle chime of Catholic church bells and the French hymns of morning worship.
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That first night, we ate spaghetti with fried eggs and soft bread from a roadside vendor, then wandered through the neighborhood. The following day we visited Nomads, an inn frequented by the local French expatriate community. We were the only Africans in the room. Most of the attendees were older (in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s) with just a few younger faces. I spoke little, restrained by the language gap, but watching George navigate the space with ease left an impression on me. For him, race wasn’t a mental barrier; people were just people. He connected, exchanged contacts, and found opportunities in conversations. Watching him made me reflect on how colonial histories have made some of us wary, even when openness could serve us better. George’s openness challenged me to think differently.
We visited his cousin, who works in car sales, had lunch with him, explored the University of Lome, and went to George’s office at the Goethe-Institut — a beautiful old Victorian building tucked into a bustling market.
As we moved through the city, I noticed details: Togo’s gates are box-like, smaller and more intimate, with doorknobs meant for house doors, and seemed to be designed for people rather than cars, unlike the grand, imposing gates of Lagos. The pace felt calmer, more reminiscent of Nigeria in the 1980s and 90s with cleaner streets, slower pace, friendlier vendors, less congestion. We briefly visited the beach also.
One detail that defined my mornings in Lome was George’s habit of listening to a daily podcast on Stoicism. I quickly adopted it. The teachings were paradigm-shifting -from practicing emotional control, detachment, the peace that comes from accepting what lies beyond one’s control. Listening to these reflections on living as a Stoic felt transformative. It reminded me that wisdom has many rivers, and our work is to let them flow into the ocean of our becoming. Even since my return, I have continued to enjoy and appreciate the steady reminder this podcast gives me each day.
We had planned to stay until Friday, but we returned early because George had an urgent matter in Cotonou. The journey back had its own lessons. At the Togo border, I paid CFA 1,000 to have my passport stamped -a fee George insisted was illegal, but we paid anyway to avoid detention. He explained that no officer has the right to seize my passport without cause, and that knowing one’s rights is essential, though so is knowing when to stand down.
The differences between borders were telling. Nigeria’s side had biometric scans, digital records. Benin and Togo recorded details in large handwritten ledger books — an image that felt like stepping back in time. Yet for all Nigeria’s technology, it had the most checkpoints and the heaviest demands for “settlement.” These road taxes of the unofficial kind explain why a bottle of Coke in Togo costs CFA 500 (₦1,200), and why my return fare from Seme to Lagos rose from ₦7,000 to ₦12,000 with each checkpoint collecting its due from the driver.
In retrospect, I perceive Nigeria in comparison with other West African countries as that eldest big brother (large, muscular, braggadocious, and sometimes a bully), but with those sudden moments of melancholy when wisdom slips from his mouth, and you wonder why he never applies it to his own life. It is a paradox that speaks to the unfinished journey of our own decolonization. The muscle without the spirit is just brute force; the spirit without action is just wistful memory. Both must dance together for true liberation.
In the end, I came home with more than the taste of Togo’s street food or the memory of its calm streets. I came home with stories -living memory, my real wealth. Travel, especially by road, across our continent forces you to see, to feel, to remember -with the human and cultural intricacies you witness along the way. You witness the continuity of our people despite borders, and you also see the long shadow of colonial disruption still shaping movement and exchange. These stories will live in my memory and my writing. They are mine to keep, and no one can take this wealth from me.
This journey remind me that reindigenization is not a romantic return, but an active remembering and ancestral technology of seeing ourselves whole again, even as we cross the lines drawn to keep us apart.
