In this day and age, with all the movements an average human needs to do, you have to be living under a rock if you claim you have never experienced a traffic jam before. Or unless you are a baby as well, then you can be excused.
Traffic is something that is now a given for many of us, battling and circumventing it on a daily basis is now our way of life. Every day, when making plans for how our day would go, we also factor in traffic, because that would decide if you get to make it to your destination at the time you want to.
I’m sure that everyone thinks the traffic in their country is worse, or maybe almost everyone. But then, here in Nigeria, traffic has a totally different breed. And the worst of all is the Lagos traffic.
Lagos is the economic capital of Nigeria, home to the headquarters of major corporations. And what this means is that there are so many people in Lagos. People are migrating from different states and setting up their base in Lagos, looking for greener pastures.
And what does that mean? A surge in population. Lagos is just filled with people. And when more than half of these people wake up every day to go to work, there is sure to be traffic. There are even times when the traffic would get so bad it would last for hours before everyone will be freed.
So, what about my worst traffic experience? Well, somehow, while it was my worst it also turned out to be one of my best as well. Let me tell you about it.
This was in November of 2020, back when the EndSARS protest was still ongoing. I boarded a bus from Owerri to Lagos. Normally, it was a journey that was supposed to be between eight to ten hours, on a good day with mild traffic. And with traffic, it could be twelve to fifteen. But usually no more.
Or so we thought.
Everything went smoothly until we got to somewhere in Ogun state. I’ve forgotten the place, but we were no longer too far from Lagos. We got there by three in the afternoon, and we found that the road was blocked by protesters.
And it came to a standstill.
From where we were, we could hear the music that they were playing, it was loud but it was also sounding far off. There was no movement at all, we all thought that it would clear out after a while, but we were very wrong. Minutes trickled into hours, and soon night fell and we were still in the same spot.
Hold on… I seem to be going faster than my shadow. I did say I enjoyed it right?
After about an hour on the bus and realizing we would not be going anywhere, we decided to go to the source of the gridlock. I along with two guys and two girls from our bus began to walk. It was a long march, with the file of vehicles we were seeing in front of our bus, we knew that there was no way we would be getting out that easy.
When we got there, the protesters were having a party!
Yeah, some of the people who were clamoring for change in the government and in the police were playing club bangers, roasting goat meat in the middle of the road there. There were those who were carrying placards with various writings on them, but they were few. You could even see some people dancing and vibing to the music.
I didn’t like what I was seeing at all. How could people who were protesting the evil being done to them do things like this? Where was the anger? Where was the rage? I felt like people like them were undermining the efforts and sacrifices of those who were actually protesting and risking their lives every day shouting for a better government.
It was as if they were calling for one thing but their actions were asking for another.
Anyway, I didn’t stay there for long and I walked back to the bus with one of the ladies. The others chose to stay back, from what we had seen, the bus would not be going anywhere that night.
So we all got comfortable.
The funny thing is that most of the vehicles that surrounded us were also commercial buses, and all the passengers trooped out and everyone was chatting freely. The topics varied as the darkness wore on, from bad governance and politics to football and cars. That was the part of the gridlock I enjoyed, just staying under the moonlight with strangers and talking.
We were so many that it was impossible to be scared for your life. It was just as if we were in a camp and the buses were tents. People were just seating in clusters around them. If anyone had tried anything silly, the person would have failed woefully.
Soon though, when it was nearing midnight, everyone began to troop back into their buses. And that was how we went inside ours as well. And we slept. It wasn’t until three in the morning that the road cleared out again, the music stopped and the protesters dispersed. Exactly twelve hours after we got trapped in the gridlock.
At that wee hour of the morning, after we left that vicinity of the protest, the road was free and the driver was able to drive at top speed. It was sometime around six in the morning that we got to the park, and from there I made my way home. I got home a few minutes past seven. Almost the same time I had left Owerri the previous day.
Yeah, I had spent twenty-four hours on the road.
While the trip had been relatively easy for me and I had not been worried or scared at all for my life, the same could not be said for those at home. My mother was sick with worry. Every time she called me and I told her we were still in the same spot, not even moving an inch. She was calling me almost every hour just to make sure I was okay.
At that time, the country was in a lot of tension, and being stuck overnight on the road could be fatal. Even after I explained the situation to her and how there were a lot of people there, she was still worried. It wasn’t until I told her the bus was moving that she felt a sense of relief. And the relief was final when I finally got home in one piece.
So you see? Somehow, this traffic jam was not as bad as so many others I have been in. There are some I’ve been in that I would be feeling sick, almost wanting to puke. There are some that I would only be breaking out in a sweat. But this one of 2020 is by far the longest time I have spent in traffic, it is the longest I have spent on the road.
Thankfully, the traffic was for good cause. Because all over the country youths were protesting in their numbers against bad governance. The youth had woken up and had chosen to speak up, this was their way of doing that. Spending twenty-four hours on the road was a small sacrifice for the greater good.
Although I didn’t like the way the people in that particular area went about their own, I guess everyone has the way they choose to do their things. I am no judge, it is not my place to say.
It was because of the protest that there is now a semblance of sanity among our law enforcers because they know now that any Tom, Dick, and Harry could be holding up a phone and making a video of them while they are acting out. Now they are that there will be a price to pay for every abuse they put on their uniform.
Hehe… this post is becoming as long as the traffic that had held me. This was not my plan.
The traffic did a lot to me that day, I saw how people could bond easily even without knowing each other. No strings, no commitments, just people wanting to have a chat while they wait for the road to clear. That was a reminder that indeed, humans are social animals.
Thank you for reading. Feel free to drop your thoughts in the comments section, I would love to hear what you are thinking. Till we meet in the next post.
This post is inspired by the second topic of this week which is Traffic Troubles. Feel free to try it out.
