In Lagos, one is sometimes struck by the scary fact that some crazed evil genius may have invented a million quick, sad ways for people to die: fall off a molue, fall prey to ritual killers, be pushed out of a moving danfo by one-chance robbers, fall into an open gutter in the rain, be electrocuted in your shop, be killed by your domestic staff, jump off the Third Mainland Bridge, get shot by armed robbers, get hit by a stray bullet from a policeman extorting motorists, get rammed by a vehicle that veers off the road into the pedestrian's walkway, die in a fire, get crushed in a collapsing building. You could count the ways and there would still be many others.
Yet, like crazed moths disdaining the rage of the flame, we keep gravitating towards Lagos, compelled by some centrifugal force that defies reason and willpower. We come, take our chances, hoping that we will be luckier than the next man, willing ourselves to believe that while our fortune lies here, the myriad evils that traverse the streets of Lagos will never meet us with bared fangs.
Abel and Santos were in Mushin when Lagos bared its fangs. There are no quiet streets in Mushin. It crackles with electric intensity and ripples with animosity. It is as if everyone, from shifty-eyed men to paranoid women, feels you are out to get them.
Mushin is a tough land with serious turf wars. Rival from different gangs and factions - especially of the National Union of Road Transport Workers - prowl the streets at midday with pump-action guns, wild looks and well-smoked joints stuck between fat, black lips.
Loud music blares out of speakers; boisterous, energetic music from the likes of Pasuma, Saheed Osupa, Wande Coal and even zanga master Durella. These are young men who once prowled these streets, who got their start in life here before success ferried them out to safer locales. Now, the young men and women left behind play their music as talismans of hope that one day the ships of their destiny will berth at a good port and their luck would also turn. ...
But in Lagos, especially in a place like Mushin, trust is a shape-shifter, a mecurial being with ever-shifting allegiances. Trust is not a boulder one leans on with confidence. It is quicksand at best: neither terra nor wholly firma.
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When Abel finally summoned up courage to leave the house, he decided he would no go beyond the island and the bank. He had, at the back of hi mind, the irrational fear that he could run into one of the boys from Mushin on the mainland.
Their first trip was to Ikoyi to visit a woman he had spoken to on the phone and whom Santos introduced first as Soni's cuntomer then later as Soni's lover. ....
The house was a lovely mansion in Parkview Estate, Ikoyi where, Santos told Abel, a plot of land sold for about $2 million [USD], even though the roads were potholed and filled with water.
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By the time they were done it was already past three. They drove in silence out of Ilupeju down to Town Planning Way and onto Ikorodu Road. Ada cruised past Obanikoro, Onipanu, Fadeyi and Jibowu, into Surulere.
Ojuelegba was busy, and as they slowed in the traffic leading to the bridge that would take them into Western Avenue, Abel felt someone tapping on the window beside him.
'Smoke, bros. Smoke,' a young man said, pointing to the hood.
'Ada, stop, stop. He says there is a smoke coming out of the engine,' Abel said already reaching for the door lock. The young man was running alogside the car, pointing but Ada kept driving.
'It's a trick, Abel. There is no smoke. If you stop, you are in trouble. Once you open your engine they will disconnect something and that's where it starts. You could get robbed or killed or made to part with some money.' ...
Back in the seventies, Fela had written a classic song about Ojuelegba. A concourse of sorts, it was a pure melee of cars, people and sounds. There were buses stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers, passengers jumping and falling off buses because the drivers would never come to a full stop to let off their fares, and in all that confusion traffic wardens were trying and failing to sanitise the madness and enforce some kind of order.
Things have improved a lot since then. The traffic lights worked, but stops with roofed stalls had been built and Ojuelegba had become a tad gentrified, but it was still part of Lagos, a place with a soul that gravitated towards the chaotic, an anarchic impulse that could never fully be tamed."
Toni Kan, 2016, 34-36, 43, 54-55
The Carnivorous City
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