Lagos and Abuja

Some four years ago, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo made a profound statement in respect of Lagos. On a visit to the former Federal Capital City, the then president famously described the place as a "jungle". Not a few Lagosians felt scandalised that their beloved city had been branded so by none other than OBJ. Others felt that as chaotic as Lagos is, it would be an exaggeration to call it a jungle.

In fact, to say that Lagos is chaotic is to put it mildly. This fact became more obvious when this writer breezed into Abuja a few years ago. One had barely reached the "new" Federal Capital City when the difference between the the two cities hits one on the face. Take, for instance, the traffic situation. Over there in Lagos motorists indulge in all sorts of lawlessness.

Comparatively, orderliness holds sway on the roads here. In Lagos, miscreants, area boys and touts reign supreme, making life nightmarish for all and sundry.
But here in Abuja, one hardly sees such undesirable elements. The ritual killers who have infested virtually all parts of Lagos is another sore case.

On a typical day, unsuspecting Nigerians board buses only to end up in some strange places where they are butchered for money-making rituals. Muggers, kidnappers and sundry criminals are also constantly on the prowl there. Living in Lagos, in short, is like living in hell. To be fair to that city, it is padded with all manners of excitement. It is truly full of fun. Ask some Lagosians and they would swear that despite its ugly side, life in Lagos is so full of a series of adventures that they would never exchange it for any other city or town. "Lagos is the place to be," an acquaintance declared to this writer recently.

"Even when I leave here for a few days, I would become Lagos-sick, I mean home-sick. The place may be rough, may be dirty, may be a jungle, but there's no other place in Nigeria that is full of so much fun".
That may be so. But life, they say, is not all about fun. And this is where Abuja stands out. When it comes to fun or social activities, Abuja may not earn high marks, particularly when compared with Lagos and other cities. Whereas it appears that Lagos, for instance, never sleeps during weekends (remember the now famous owambe parties?)

Abuja is somewhat lifeless at weekends. What this city lacks in social activities, however, it has judiciously made up for in areas such as serenity, an impressive road network, admirable planning, and orderliness. Here, much of the madness that has turned Lagos into a "jungle" is more or less absent. The result? Living in Abuja is relatively devoid of the wahala that is your constant companion in Lagos. That, at any rate, was the situation that has held sway here over the years. In the past couple of months, however, the situation has become akin to what obtains in Lagos. Go-slow has become the order of the day in some parts of Abuja. Consider the road leading in and out of the city through the Nyanya/Keffi axis.

On a typical day, the 'go-slow' on this expressway stretches all the way from the satellite town called Nyanya through Mogadushi Cantonment (formerly Abacha Barracks) to A.Y.A Junction - a distance of about three kilometers -during the morning rush - hours.
Come and see a legion of vehicles crawling bumper-to-bumper at a pace that would "rival" a snail.
Come and witness drivers desperately shuffling here and there in a manner that would shame the crazy drivers there in the nation's "center of excellence".

Not even the fact that each portion of the dual-carriage expressway could accommodate, at least, four lanes of vehicles at a time, helps. Rather, the impatient drivers lay siege to the road, with the result that five or six lanes of vehicles would be seen sneaking from Nyanya to Abuja. Needless to say, their impatience and single-minded determination to get to their destination by all means intensify the bedlam...

The situation is more or less the same in the evening, particularly between 5p.m and 8p.m. Have you ever tried to wriggle yourself out of a suffocating traffic snarl in say, Oshodi, Lagos? Then you have got an idea of the nightmare motorists and commuters alike endure when heading to Nyanya from Abuja during evening rush hours. A sort of journey to nowhere. Starting from the Federal Secretariat junction (near Asokoro) to the A.Y.A junction (near the ECOWAS secretariat) movement on this road during these hours is a veritable nightmare, with hundreds of vehicles scrambling for right of the way. To compound the situation, many impatient drivers swerve crazily to both sides of the road in their desperation to "beat" the intimidating "go-slow". The result? Bashed or dented cars here and there; broken-down vehicles; buses or cars stuck in the gutter all over the place.

Ironically, the traffic bottleneck has been compounded by the government's efforts to ameliorate the situation. Following the people's outcry in the heat of the seemingly endless go-slow, a contract was awarded at the tail of the Obasanjo regime for the construction of "access roads" on both sides of the expressway. But, alas! Even as work is "in progress" here, motorists' and commuters' misery continues to worsen. So much so that as "early" as 4p.m on some days the ubiquitous go-slow would have reared its ugly head.

The Nyanya/Keffi-Abuja expressway is, of course, not the only king of go-slow in this city, with many of the areas around Wuse bus stop being notable examples. In fact, as the population of the FCT continues to balloon, thereby stretching the lamentable infrastructure thin, slums, "area boys", go-slow and other notorious features of "Looney Lagos" are crawling up "by the day. Indeed, traffic chaos reigns supreme in Lagos. Ogba is barely a stone throw from Oshodi. But during a typical rush hour of the day, your vehicle would be stuck in the traffic for between one and two hours. And even as you crawl through the seemingly endless go-slow, the antics of other impatient drivers, area boys and predatory government revenue officials would stretch your endurance to the limit.

By the time you reached your destination, you are most likely to be tired, edgy, stressed and irritable... Little wonder, for some of us Lagos, an otherwise beautiful and exciting city, is like a lost paradise. After all, once upon a time, Lagos was relatively serene and orderly. But that was once upon a time... Over the years, bouts of madness have torpedoed Lagos from its paradise-like pedestal to the level called a jungle by a certain Olusegun Obasanjo. In other words, coming to live here in Abuja after spending many years in the jungle (oops, / mean Lagos) is like waltzing from hell to a haven. Abuja, mind you, has its own shortcomings. It has its fair share of madness. The biggest madness here is the authorities' boundless zeal for demolition of houses.

Even then, to people like yours sincerely, Abuja is the place to be. With its orderliness, serenity, cleanliness, etc., one dare say there's no place like Abuja. In other words, this is like a newly found paradise. One area where Abuja needs to "learn" from Lagos, however, is that city's large-heartedness, so to say. Whether you are rich or poor, Lagos has a place for you. For instance, you don't need to be a millionaire to be able to live in most parts of Lagos. The rich and poor alike live side-by-side in areas such as Ikeja, Festac, Ikoyi and even Victoria Island.

This is veritably rare in Abuja, as even some well-to-do folk find it difficult to cough the Shylock rent needed to live in virtually all parts of Abuja. In Lagos, the average folk could chop and belle-full with an amount as low as N50. All one has to do is to waltz to a Mama-put "joint" and, voila, one is in Promised Land. Not in Abuja. Here, you need to cough a comparatively princely amount to be able to afford your "daily bread".

In fact, virtually all the mama-put "joints" in Abuja have been wiped out, thanks to the demolition craze that raged during the reign of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai. Whichever way one looks at it, Abuja and Lagos are two interesting cities with different tales to tell. Cities padded to the brim with the good, the bad and the ugly. Cities paved with gold here, with dross there and with silver and/or bronze elsewhere. Cities that are so similar in some respect and very dissimilar in other aspects...