Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, July 07, 2004.
Looking delectable at 60 (1)
By Sam Kargbo
Lagos, Nigeria’s de facto capital city and
“Centre of Excellence,” is a challenge to gerontologists. In the first place, the city is not
only restive but also inflicted by a severe and chronic insomnia. Lagos is one city where people
don’t sleep and rest.
Weekends that are meant for people to rest and recuperate from devastating
stress of the week days, are the worst victims. Instead of recreating in the leisurely and serene beaches
adjoining the city, Lagosians would rather throng the streets like termites,
though unlike the termites, they do nothing substantially edifying or
beneficial. In other words,
trekking is another plague eating the souls of Lagosians. One can hardly tell as between the
vehicular and human traffic which one is worse in Lagos. Besides places like Idumota and Oshodi,
there are one thousand and one other places in Lagos where only the most
stubborn drivers can venture to ply with their vehicles.
Someone once told me that if he were in a position to
advise Tinubu, he would ask him to leave the management of the vehicular
traffic on the intruding and defiant federal highways in Lagos to Ogunlewe, who
now seems to have added to his portfolio and jurisdiction, the Federal Road
Safety Corp, and instead establish a human traffic department to be managed by
a body like LASMA. Now that
Ogunlewe has used his federal might to maliciously banish Tinubu’s state
police (or state terror?) from the federal highways in Lagos, I am tempted to
tell Tinubu to ask his legal team to examine the possibility of circumventing
if not reducing Ogunlewe’s legal leverage by establishing the suggested
human traffic department with more or less the same powers as those of LASMA,
except that this time around they would be policing human beings including
those unruly and lawless drivers on the soils of Lagos State. The enabling law should endeavour to
define the Lagosians as anybody who at any relevant or material time is or
found within Lagos State. In which case, if the Honourable Minister Ogunlewe
comes to Lagos either on an official or private visit or even en route to finding
a safe haven abroad for some of the surpluses funds he gets in the course of
his ministering or ministration of one of the most lucrative ministries in the
country, he becomes a Lagosians and thereby subject to the suzerainty of the
Asiwaju of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu. Do not think that there is no nuance between a law directed
at human beings and one specified for traffic. But that is not the issue here. What we are concerned with
is the riotous and demanding nature of Lagos.
Lest you think that I have a particular bad belle for
Lagos, I want to surprise you with
my findings. In spite of its
rambunctious nature, it hosts some of the most beautiful elderly people on
earth. And this is in addition to
the fact that it is the home of the most religious and happiest people on
earth. How is that possible?
Let me narrate to you a personal experience I had on
Saturday, July 3, 2004. I was invited for a 9 o’clock Television
programme on Channels Television the previous night. I tried to sleep early but old habits don’t die
overnight. I slept at about 2 a.m. Woke up at about 5 o’clock on Saturday
to enable me deliver a draft document to a client at Apapa at 7 a.m. I did and
left the client at about 8:15 a.m. after going through the document with him and
he had made his contributions towards the final document. I rushed to Channels Television and was
lucky to get there five minutes to the start of the programme. I wanted coffee or any energizer but at
times one has to endure to avoid embarrassing the host. I struggled through the programme and
dashed to the Lagos State University through the Egbeda axis. I spent more than two hours on the
road. I was not impressed with
Tinubu. My students were already
restive by the time I got to the school.
I apologised to them and rushed through class. I left in a hurry for the football match between our Super
Eagles and the Desert Foxes of Algeria.
I have since had my reservations about our Field Marshall Chukwu. My guts tell me repeatedly that the NFA
has been Wazobianised among the Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Ibo cults. If one is the Chairman and the other is the Secretary then
the other should be Coach.
Rubbish. But that’s
not my point. I was anxious to watch the pairing of Aiyegbeni (the best striker
at the moment) and Martins (the ‘kid’ of the moment). With the last
disastrous outing in Angola, my wish was for a resounding victory over the
Algerians.
Because of my experience on the way to LASU, I
decided to avoid Tinubu’s road and opted for Ogunlewe’s highway. That was my mistake. I spent more than two hours between
LASU and Barracks, a distance of less than two kilometres. At some point I was
suspicious that Tinubu had used bad belle to close the road to Mile 2 so as to prove the point
that without LASTMA the Federal highways would be impassable. I cursed whoever was responsible. I
have not heard of a sudden death of any of those that I suspected were behind
the unprecedented traffic jam. God
may not have answered my prayer though I know that He takes His time on
everything and weighs my sentiments against the realities on the ground. When
it was 4 o’clock, I switched on to Brilla FM. I would have said more
about this radio station but I do not want to annoy my proprietor who may not
be impressed with free and unsolicited adverts. If the owners of Brilla FM can
read this, I advise them to do some form of public relations with Daily
Independent so that
people like us can have the license to say what we want to say about them.
