Notorious Traffic Jam

I have been undertaking my Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) at an engineering training institute for more than two months now. Trust me, if not for the fact that what I wanted was relatively more in Lagos state, I would not even try to dare. I do not think I would love to settle in this city, largely because of the traffic and high cost of living. Who knows, decisions change. Well, proudly have I survived weeks.

Photo by Mikechie Esparagoza

Being a student, it is only natural to have a knack for trying to look for ways to reduce costs. I remember the first day I resumed work, I spent double the amount on transportation as I do now. Relative to transport, utilizing public transit called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) got me a service at a reduced rate. Although it was not all fun and rosy every time, there were times I wished I could just get off and find an alternative home.

Sometime last month, I left work around 5 p.m. and passed through the normal route to get to the bus stop to board a bus home. I was met with a long queue of vehicles. As a smart boy, I scanned the horizon as far as I could see, I saw that a portion of the road was not blocked but vehicles were not passing through it. I felt the traffic jam would not take long before it freed up. I hopped onto a BRT (now there are two shades, one has the blue colour and the other red which is the most public of them all). The latter was the choice when I left work to go home.

Funnily enough, I did not even see a conductor (bus attendant), I should have suspected that I was in for something that would not turn out funny. After spending close to 30 minutes at one of the many standstills, the bus moved sheepishly to a point where I could see what caused the jam. A tanker had overturned on the flyover so no vehicle was allowed to go past it, we were directed to take the streets which were already blocked. An average Nigerian can relate to this scenario when everybody and the vehicle want to squeeze into a tiny freeway and everything clogs up again. I could not get down because I only knew the straight route, not these places that looked like a labyrinth.

Normally, it only takes about an hour from work to get home, I can tell you that nearly three hours later we had not even covered the journey where we could have bypassed the flyover. After I had accepted my fate, we finally made it out and then the conductor arrived from nowhere, a woman a that. Not without inflating the price tag for the passengers just coming in. And, not without me having an issue - my very tired self. Why me?

Since the woman didn't see me when I entered long before we left the thick traffic jam along the way, he insisted that I pay the new price. I explained that I had been here all throughout the journey, suffering with you all, I didn't abandon the bus. In my mind, I pointed an imaginary finger at her saying she was the one who abandoned us for a whole three hours. Right through all these, my head was already banging with headaches as I don't do well in traffic jams and the passengers were all about the place hissing, cursing, and giving all types of driving advice to the driver - they should have just hijacked the steering wheel instead

I got home around 9 pm which meant I spent 4 hours for an hour's journey, I honestly do not wish for that to happen anymore at all.