SATIRICALLY YOURS: The Lagos Drive

They are widely considered to be the third most annoying feature in Nigeria. For those who wish to know, the first two positions belong to the Nigerian mosquitoes and its annoying cousin, the indestructible cockroach.

Every morning, thousands of people leave their home at the hint of dawn just so they can avoid being trapped in a 5 hour long traffic jam. Their reasoning is anything if not correct.

Since the whole point of an 8 to 5 job requires that you do in fact spend those 9 hours in your office, getting stuck for half the day on the road will not do much for your salary odds. And so they leave their homes as early as 4am and stay in their offices until 10pm.

Yes, the bosses do not complain. And no, the salaries do not increase.

But every now and then, despite their best efforts people sometimes end up getting caught in the rush hour of the morning. Maybe they forgot to turn on their alarm, or they went to bed a little too late—whatever the reason might be, every now and then people slip out of their waking schedule and get quickly punished by the drag of the Lagos traffic.

When this happens there is very little to do but sit down, wind up the windows and play a mental game of “what might have happened if I woke 30 minutes earlier.”

This is not to say that being stuck in traffic is not without its joys. There are a few merits associated with driving at 500 metres an hour. Obviously it is clearly safer for the driver (as long as your windows are wound up and you avoid making eye contact with those two men standing right next to your door).

But perhaps the brightest lining that can be found in the darkened clouds of the Lagos rush hour is the intriguing presence of the Lagos traffic market.

Do you wish to buy an original fake Rolex? Are you in search of the latest season of House MD? Are you just looking for something which you can use to kill those annoying mosquitoes and cockroaches? All you need to do is sit patiently in traffic and it will come to you.

It has been said that almost anything can be bought in traffic. Food, Electronic items, and even a wife—the possibilities are endless. People who are late for work can rush out into their car still dressed in their pyjamas and buy a suit on the way to work.

If they are lucky (which means they possess sufficient bargaining skills), they’ll even be able to get a changing room curtain and a bedside alarm alongside the deal. The market is an extremely good one.

The iphone popped up on the streets of Lagos, 2 weeks before its release and over a million handkerchiefs have changed hands along the streets of Lagos.

In the giant wheel of commerce that is Lagos, more than a 100 million Naira worth of sales is actively done in the streets right in the throng of traffic. All this is enough to stir the conspiracy theorist in me. Maybe these traffic jams are not really random abnormalities.

It is quite possible that they are in fact orchestrated. Every evening the traffic hawkers sit down and plan how best to impede the flow of traffic for the next day. Iya Buki, the lady who sells those amazing Akara meals, suggests parking a broken down bus in the middle of the road.

Bola, the leading sales person of the beefy sensation, Gala, is more of the opinion that digging a few more holes into the road should be more than enough. And on and on it goes until they reach their desired goal. The creation of yet another humbling crawl of traffic.

This of course is merely conjecture on my part. I am most probably wrong and yet a part of me worries that I might be uncannily right. Still, there is however one last important benefit of the Lagos traffic. It gives people time to slow down and appreciate their day.

The lifestyle in Lagos is so fast that sometimes it takes a halt in traffic to realise that you have a flat tire. Husbands pause to say good morning to their wives and the females seize this opportunity to attend to their make-up.

Traffic Jams give Lagosians a chance to attend to things they otherwise should have been doing. As it turns out, much can be done from the seats of a car.

Where else do you think this article was written?