Okay, so you always run into traffic in Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria – Port Harcourt, Kano, Benin, Onitsha and now, as I have heard and seen, Abuja, that model city we all thought will stay true to its purpose (a city for lonely, misguided politicians and directionless government officials who only know how to pretend to be working while the country rots). Actually, we thought Abuja would become such a lonely place that those who live in it would feel the loneliness so much that they would be forced to beg us to come over and save them from their boredom – but, oh no! Many of us have lapped up to ‘them’ politicians and government officials, so much so that traffic, as I have heard and have observed, has been building up and they are all happy seeing the suffering and so continue with their pretence at always doing something when they actually do nothing!
Fellow indulgees though, and this is taking a chance that they know, asked to compare traffic situations across the country, will tell you that they encounter them in varying forms, especially for those who live in cities which think being mega is an interesting buzzword for being cool. You know, sometimes some things we do can be illusionary, and until we have exhausted our energy junketing all over the place, selling the story about some mega-city status, we wouldn’t accept that the chicken always comes home to roost! When it does that – coming home to roost – it quickly sees traffic in front of it and screams! Immediately, it also becomes clear to everyone concerned that most cities in Nigeria actually need functional railways made to run through different parts of these cities to serve people, nothing else!
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So, as you run into traffic every so often in Lagos (and other mega-status chasing cities), you can be sure that you’ll always also run into all sorts of traders – those sometimes useful, and sometimes useless, traffic traders whom the inability of government to think out of the proverbial box to create jobs has forced to become pseudo-Olympic athletes, able to chase the devil out of anyone possessed by the devil when your car is in motion and they want you to buy a few gala here, a few toothpick there! So daring are they that you don’t have to signal them that you are interested in what they are selling before they just thrust them at you. Woe betide you if your windows are wound down!
In these days, though, when the fear of “stick-up! Give me your mobile, your wristwatch and all other valuables” has become the rule rather than the exception of life in mega-city traffic gridlocks, you can be sure that most times windows are wound up – in spite of the terrible heat people without air-conditioning in their cars have to endure! And if you just came back from a temperate region, then double woe will betide you surely! And as it’s often the case, you will find that in city traffic gridlocks there will be small cars and big cars. Those of us who are in love with ourselves and our status that in real terms amount to naught in our present condition will feel even more comfortable in our horrible roads driving or being driven in Nissan Armadas and such other vehicles made for inter-state journeys. We care not about our fellow citizens, so does it really matter if we don’t care about the environment? It doesn’t, my friends – and don’t tell me, like Bob Dylan, that: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” It is not! There would surely be indulgees out there who would sometimes wonder what it is that ‘them’ big cars on our roads, which are often used to intimidate ordinary mortals, feel when they have to go ‘bumper to bumper’, following that musician, Wande Cole, to Mushin, or the other one, Timaya, to Odioma in his beloved Bayelsa State.
You would really be chuffed, were you to be keenly observing this bumper-to-bumper trend, of small cars and big cars rubbing shoulder against shoulder in day-time traffic. But here’s what would chuff you out the most! When you are there, as an indulgee, laughing your head off at a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) or, in some ridiculous cases, a Hummer jeep, trying very hard to manoeuvre its way through city streets that are offensively filthy, you would be left really wondering what goes through the mind of the big man or woman who is supposed to be really enjoying his or her wealth but is actually not – more like saying: “He or she might have a Hummer, but we are all in this together – I mean, no good road to drive our cars.” It really makes sense in this country when you are described as being filthily rich – you sure are, I can tell you.
So it really makes you want to get into the head of the big man or woman, who thinks he or she is powerful in this country, but in truth is only as powerful as his or her surroundings are! And that really counts for an awful lot in the measurement of the Hummer/SUV owner’s life expectancy as far his or her fellow big men/women outside these shores are concerned! Would he or she read this and attempt to use his or her powers to help change things? Sure no! Why should he or she? You want to deny him or her the only real source of pleasure – that of seeing and knowing that, indeed, there are fellow citizens who are suffering in this country? That’s one joy of being a ‘big’ man or woman – as defined in our own country. But city traffic seems to be a leveller of some sort. I can tell you that because I remember the buzz my friend, Nola, had in the UK when she rode on a train with a former Chief of General Staff, something she wouldn’t have been able to do in her own country. But as you find yourself stuck in traffic – as a passenger in a public transport vehicle or motorcycle or Keke NAPEP, or as a small car owner, or even as a big SUV/Hummer owner, you surely don’t escape the onslaught from traffic traders, do you? Those traders, bless them. They shove all sorts into your ‘face’ (windscreen, window) – hand/face towels, vegetables, ironing board and, wait for it, rat poison! I have often observed that there is no discrimination as to who or what car gets any product shoved at them. So you will find a traffic trader with all sorts of rodent poison/killer shoving his wares into the driver/car-owner side of the man or woman in an SUV or Hummer, just like they would shove same into a small public transport bus full of people heading for Agege!
There is a metaphor in that action. I have often asked myself why this happens. Why does the rodent poison/killer think that someone driving an SUV or a Hummer jeep would have need for a rodent poison? Okay, I admit that I have sometimes been cynical as to think in this head of mine that in the event that he approached an SUV being driven by or carrying a woman in the owner’s corner, it could mean that he was offering some remedy for her to use against all the men who have jilted her in this life, in particular the one who last did!
But you will actually find the metaphor in the fact that whether or not we drive a small car or a big car, whether or not we intimidate small ordinary mortals with our Nissan Armada, the fact that a rat poison can be shoved in our direction suggests to me that some, if not all of us, have been found out for who we are! We all have rodents in our cupboards! And, in fact, some of us are rodents – whether or not we are in a Nissan Armada, Hummer or any such-like vehicles. There are rodents who feed fat on our national wealth and street traders know this, hence the offer to them to buy rat poison and use on themselves. These are rodents which disturb ordinary mortals all over the country, taking from them what rightly belongs to them. And I am sure fellow indulgees now understand the metaphor in shoving rat poison at an SUV!
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