I am tired of this city,” the 39-year-old says. My brain is tired, my hands are tired, my soul is tired. He kicks the Transporter back into gear and focuses on the tasks at hand: maneuver wisely, don’t dent someone, conserve fuel. “Because what good is a road if all you do is fight every day for an inch of space on it?” “Maybe the government has tried to improve traffic, but we can’t see it,” Surajuddin says. Riders try to resolve a dispute between a traffic official and a bus driver on the Lekki-Epe Expressway in Lagos.
MOST POPULOUS CITIES IN THE WORLD DRIVERS
On the trip between Ajah - a newly developing suburb on the eastern edge of Lagos - and downtown, he said, he usually witnesses half a dozen fights between drivers unbottling their tempers after hours stuck in place. Surajuddin’s daily route down one of Lagos’s most severely clogged arteries reveals the city’s dangerously high blood pressure. The horror stories aren’t of bad jams they’re of the times the “go-slow” became a “no-go” and everyone just left their cars in the road, figuring they would fetch them once the day’s obstructions - a flooded patch of road, a broken-down truck - were cleared. That’s why the small talk in this city isn’t about weather. Many doubt even its simplest promises, such as the impending inauguration of a single subway line that was supposed to open a decade ago. Lagos will balloon to 30 million, then 50 million, maybe even 100 million people, and meanwhile the government will keep unveiling new visions for the city that never come to fruition.
The traffic is a manifestation of what Lagosians fear most for their city: There is no plan.
“This is every day,” one says, when a reporter turns around and looks at her with a sympathetic face.
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