Gerd Meuer

When they reached EKO, early Portuguese sailors called the place Lagos, like the town back home on the Algarve. And until the early sixties Nigeria’s capital was a more or less orderly place with even a palm-lined Marina on the Atlantic where lovers used to go for a stroll in the early evenings. But that came to an abrupt end with what Nigerians soon called the ‘Oil Doom’ instead of Boom, and with the flight from the hinterland. And then Lagos turned from a city with half a million inhabitants into a 15-million moloch - those ants live on the islands between the lagoons or lagos, and to an even greater extend on the mainland. Since the early seventies the islands and the mainland have been connected by first the ‘second’ and then the ‘third mainland’ bridges, which in turn lead to a large network of American-style highways. 
But since subsequent civilian and military regimes simply forgot to develop a mass transport system, the millions have to move by individual transport as well as those infamous danfo or bolekaja (‘come and fight with me’) or molue buses. Until the advent of the cellular phone, which must have reduced the need to travel by half, traffic was daily and for hours at a total stand-still, or in ‘go-slow’-mode. Whoever really wanted to move had to use OKADA, which is a taxi on two wheels, on a moped. This forces the customer to ride on the back in sweltering heat or in pouring rain, always in danger of being hit by a rowdy taxi or an over-loaded lorry giving off huge black diesel clowds. It really is Dantesque. 
Now the ‘man’ is normally driven around in an armoured Mercedes 4x4, made available by the Governor of Lagos State ‘for security purposes’ – after all, one of his closest friends, the former Minister of Justice, Bola Ige, was murdered in his very own house. And so the ‘man’ obeys his friends and travels in this ‘prison on four wheels’ and promptly gets stuck... 
For hours, until he has had enough of it and tells his ‘British-trained’ driver:”I am going to get out and continue by OKADA.“ The driver, who normally locks the car from inside, takes fright and begs his guest: ”Oga, I beg, please DON’T! My boss will kill me when he hears about this!“ Wole however manages to leave the armoured car. Hardly is he standing in the street, clearly visible with his white tuft of hair, than a swarm of OKADAS stops around him. The ‘man’ is after all known to each and everyone in Lagos. Then Wole choses a rather confidence-inspiring Okada and asks the man to drive him to his friend Yemi’s place on Victoria Island. Whereupon that OKADA driver begs him: ”Oga, please, I beg don’t do that to me. If anything happens to us my colleagues will kill me!”
The man simply refuses to carry Wole, who however insists, mounts on the back of the bike and tells the man to go. Whereupon the other two dozen or so OKADA drivers tell their colleague in unison:”If anyting happen to da man, you dey breathe your last one!“ 
And then Wole tells of his OKADA ride, with the poor driver sweating, accompanied by an entire crowd of colleagues, circling between cars and lorries and buses through the endless ‘go-slow’: Each time the cortège has to slow down between cars, hundreds of incredulous eyes peer out of car windows to see the ‘man’ riding past on the bike. They just can’t believe it. Or, in fact, they do: for this is exactly the way the ‘man’ is! 
When finally the OKADA driver and his customer reach Yemi’s house, Wole pulls a Naira note from his pocket to pay the driver, who grows himself into the sand, begging: ”Oga, please, make you no go dat for me!“
Wole recounts that experience with immense gusto, but he also admits that he is not bent on repeating it because of the ‘emotional stress involved’. But most probably he will be forced to repeat it, just “because of this hell better known as Nija (Nigeria).“