Ramblings of a Lagosian

        Another week another post and I just want to expose my state a little.

Lagos, omo is there a more stressful place in this country? It’s like the entire state is built to work against you in some way. Every lagosian wakes up angry I can’t be convinced otherwise, imagine getting off your bed by 4am to beat traffic only to get stuck in one for two to three hours.

How did this state even get called the centre of excellence? The only thing this state can boast of is housing the most mentally disturbed people in the country. You buy gala in traffic hoping to fill your stomach and unwind while scrolling through twitter and there’s a possibility you’d face one of many problems.

One, You pay with either a 1000 or 500 naira note and person hawking the gala runs away with your change. “Oga oga wait abeg make I meet my partner collect change” 20 minutes later you realize you’ve been hoodwinked and begin to curse traffic all over again. Scenes where the guy selling gala ran away with the only money you had for transport.

Two, the gala is expired. At this point you know you’re finished, your money is gone, the gala has been expired for at least a week and you still have an empty stomach. You could always solve it by getting another but the pain in your chest might make you push the hunger aside.

Three and for me the biggest problem yet, your phone gets stolen. Is stolen even an appropriate word? While stretching your hand out to pick a gala a friendly lagosian stretches his hand in and picks your phone. What could you possibly do? There’s no way chase the thief because it’s a bus, there’s an automatic appetite loss and of course you can’t scroll through twitter and unwind. At this point you know you made a mistake even getting in the bus.

Don’t even get me started on some awkward moments when passengers board with animals and goat eats your white shirt. The same one you managed to get ironed despite the horrible light situation, light you hadn’t seen in a week prior to the day before. Only for a goat to eat your shirt, what way forward?

There’s a saying that many are mad but few are roaming but in Lagos it doesn’t work that way, everybody is mad. There was this one time I was on my way out and a bus driver (danfo for context) hit this man’s car, stepped out and began to curse the man. Telling him that he was in the wrong lane, the danfo driver was the one in the wrong lane but because of dirty white singlet and 2 sachets of action bitters he had all the nerve in the world.

If you actually think about it there’s no good reason for most traffic jams. Maybe just one section of the road is bad, or a car broke down there and something that shouldn’t take 2 minutes to get past can lead to a traffic jam of at least two hours.

Imagine dating an Igbo girl named Nneka who suffers all this and you expect love? Focus on your mental health before she bruises you.

One of the funniest things about lagosians is that they can literally pick a fight over anything, including the fact that you both wear the same shirt. The conversation would just go “Bros your shirt fine o but e be like fake”, “How you take know that one and wetin concern you?”  “Ah I just talk say make I tell you, I get this kain shirt for house and I fit show you where you go see original buy”. The first guy throws a punch and a brawl begins up until someone’s eye gets swollen shut.

Another problem the bike men. Especially the Hausa bike men just terrible to be honest. There was a time my friend and I decided to take okada (not right if you don’t call it by the name) to visit another friend of ours and we decided to fly bike. Horrible decision, after arguing and finally agreeing to pay 100 naira instead of 200 for both of us we got on. This bike man was honestly flying, everything was speeding past, I couldn’t even open my eyes. The sand in the air felt like bullets and this Hausa guy was still pouring on some more speed, eventually we got to where we would stop and this guy didn’t even slow down. Just stepped on the brakes and stopped, I thought I would fly off the seat and find myself on the road. One of the few things I never want to experience again.

 Most importantly just have money, its only money that will allow a man slap a soldier and get away with it. How this happened was actually funny, it was at a toll gate and while cars were passing this soldier brushed another car. I’m not so sure what car it was now but if you see it you’d know it could buy the soldiers entire car and more. So this man steps out of his car, walked right to the driver’s side and slapped the soldier right in the face. Best thing I ever saw, the man couldn’t even do anything because he knew he was well out of his depth.

These are just few of the things that go on in the “Centre of Excellence” and I know people have funnier stories than the few I’ve heard.

Till whenever next time is, wear your masks and if you’re a lagosian please get a therapist.