Lagos nights are short, too short and often restless, especially for those in paid employment who have to maintain a rigid routine. Each morning and as the job demands, they must rise early to face the heavy Lagos traffic, or preferably rise early enough to escape it entirely. Within a short time, the pressure of sustaining this feat becomes nerve raking and takes the form of a mental Goliath of Gath, mocking the ease and psyche of the working Lagosian, grating on their nerves even while attempting to snatch a few precious hours of needed sleep, and raiding their early waking hours with a profuse, pervasive and semi conscious dread of facing yet another grinding day.
There are different configurations or type (in case you no like grammar) of the Lagos city traffic just as there were four other brothers of the terrible Goliath terrorising the inhabitants of the city. There is the third mainland bridge strain, which perennially (that is to say always) afflicts the Island worker, teaching him or her that more haste does not necessarily amount to more speed; a lesson often internalized from hindsight after a traffic incident when one suddenly finds himself confronting a fellow motorist with the rhetorical questions, “you bashed my car? Do you know who I am? Are you mad? etc.etc. Then there is the Western Avenue to Ikorodu road version which induces mild claustrophobia(a fear for enclosed spaces) and can suddenly come to a still jam on unexpected evenings, thereby reducing the prospects of arriving home before midnight. However the Apapa Oshodi express traffic takes the crown in terms of the sheer chaos (or katakata) on the road when there is heavy traffic. It simply takes nerves of steel to navigate ones way through that uproar.
Again just like the giant Goliath caused the gallant soldiers of a nation to cower and hide for some days before the boy David showed up, many talented and promising Lagosians have had the wind taken out of their sails by the tedium of Lagos traffic. Some have devised a few escape strategies like staying back at home till later in the day before venturing out; while others have resorted to working from home up to three days out of a five day working week. There is also a happy bunch of car dumpers like yours truly, who would gladly abandon their cars contrary to social perceptions of what is fitting and hop a bus or hitch a ride whichever is readily available; and yet others who just jump into the traffic with zest only to arrive and takeout an hour napping in the office. Finally, there are those who have perfected the nerve wracking art of sleep-driving, multitasking between the improbable combination of napping and negotiating the traffic and sometimes giving fellow road users a rude bump from behind. Whatever group one subscribes to, life must go on, and that is the rationale behind the city.
Joe Biden, former US Vice President took a train ride back home after the handover ceremonies to the Trump administration but can you imagine a Lagos big boy inside the BRT? Image is everything in Lagos and of course image is defined by material status rather than by value contributed to society. Every big boy must look and ride like one or suffer likely depreciation in his big boy/big girl status. Speaking of BRT, that was one welcome innovation at the beginning until the buses and services were allowed to fall apart. One hopes that the present administration would continue in its effort to revamp that service. There can be no amount of personal enrichment that can substitute social welfare and organization in the making of a decent prosperous and happy society. At the end of the day we are only as happy as our neighbor, and that is the law of universal resonance.
Ants can be an interesting study and so too is the behavior and response of most Lagosians in traffic. From observation, there is a sub conscious obsession with scarcity driving these responses in thick of daily traffic jams. Underlying the frenzied rush for a seat inside battered and rickety buses, and the desperate tussle to edge a fellow motorist out of the way is a notion of a scarcity of time, space and opportunities in the quest for survival. The first instinct in Lagos is to survive, not to live. Living presupposes a social and spiritual connectivity; that all of us are related and share a common destiny under one God and therefore deserve the best attention and consideration from each other. Survival in the language of the street is simply a ‘matured jungle’, it is a desperate imperative suggesting a “me against the world” narrative; get it first and damn every other consequence; it is dissociative assonance that is, a vibration that rhymes only with itself. Living bequeaths a calm trust in a benevolent and all sufficient God. Survival leaves nothing to chance; must remain ever in control. Lagos traffic provides a front seat in the observation of control freaks out of control, and trying to control others. The angry honking is the perfect sound setting of the melodrama.
And having failed to stay in control, the average Lagosian (I hope the reader is above averageb) is often assailed by anxiety and sometimes mild and profuse panic attacks. One can hazard a guess that the blood pressure indicator of a Lagos motorist goes quite high before entering traffic. And that is understandable considering that predators sensing our dissociative assonances to each other easily isolate their prey for victimization. Whether official or unofficial, these predators bank on the fact that everyone is looking out for no one but themselves and so they know that it is unlikely that anyone will challenge them when they single out their victims. So it is a common scenario to find a motorist besieged by gangster robbers in broad daylight without any response from other road users or one being harassed and molested by overzealous state actors without so much as an enquiry from fellow citizens. Truth be told, there are instances also of remarkable acts of kindness; a fellow motorist pulling over to help out another with car issues on third mainland bridge; or passers by intervening to save a victim from assault or violence by an assailant. Lagosians are mostly good people but often too preoccupied with their own challenges to readily interfere with that of others. We are too used to fighting our battles alone, just like most big cities today, populated by proximate strangers.
Indeed the introspective life is the bane of our modern society. Our lives are fenced in either by social inhibitions or tribal and religious affiliations. We build walls faster than bridges; readily give a shove quicker than a hug; and find it easier to exchange a cold stare or a curse rather than a smile. Some of the situations that make us bawl out curses at our fellow road users could actually be laughed off with a dose of humour. Humour is scarce and that is why we pay the comedians so much for it, even in our churches. Humour is the imagination to laugh over our differences rather than go to war over them. It enables us to harness our differences like the different parts of an orchestra to create a beautiful counterpoint.
Humour and joy are the biggest assets needed on Lagos roads. Most times we are so caught up with our goals that we overlook gratitude; so much in a hurry that we lose good cheer. Wound up, and tense, we lash out at the slightest provocation or obstacle forgetting the supreme gift of life. We often forget the joy of singing; our faces set as masks to cover our weariness and despair when a song could revive our soul and joy. To see a guy or lady singing in Lagos traffic is indeed a refreshing sight, like the cool breeze wafting in from the Atlantic.
