Jesu! AH! Driver easy ooo, You wan kill us abi?
Wetin dey worry this driver sef? Passengers
yelling on top of their voices as the luxurious bus
driver speed away into the night till the break of
dawn.
On the 13 September, 2014, I traveled down to
Kaduna State, Nigeria for my friend Akumy, since
he was passing out from the Nigerian Defence
Academy, Kaduna. I decided to use the luxurious
bus transport system for the first time in my life
and I sure had a crazy experience as I journeyed
through the night back to Lagos.
Take off time was set for 7:30pm but we left the
park some few minutes past 9pm because the
workers wanted to get extra passengers in the
bus. Aside the 60 seated passengers, the workers
wanted to fit in some other passengers who paid
less than the fixed fare to sit on the aisle as
“attachments”.
I boarded the popular “young shall grow” motors
with the knowledge of how amazing their
“luxurious” buses were, when my older siblings
patronized them back in those days. About
20mins into the journey, the gears (shift) failed
to engage, which made the driver request for a
replacement bus that the passengers could board
in to. After agreeing to transfer ourselves and
our luggage's was when we realized the bus
looked and sounded older than 20 years. The
body was refurbished and repainted to make it
look recent, but the interior? na...na...na...na it
couldn't hide its age.
The engine sound was loud and smokey, the
interior was so old, my seat could not be relaxed,
the arm rest was broken and the seat was
smelling. Yes! I almost forgot, we had 2 of
somethings that looked like a televisions but it
was a 13inch screen in a box. Unfortunately, it
wasn't turned on, so I couldn't tell if it was
black and white or colored.
The scariest part of the journey was when our
driver attempted to over-take a fuel tanker but
instead, the bus skied out of the road twice; first
was to the shoulder and then at second attempt
to over take, the driver had to apply the
Automatic Breaking System (ABS) to break the
top speed the bus was into and then, into the
thick bush beside the road somewhere between
Ibadan and Lagos. Which was because the
tanker driver swapped into our lane in order to
hinder the bus driver from overtaking. Instantly,
there were screams of prayers and insults flying
above the seats to God and d driver
simultaneously from the passengers.
A few kilometers ahead , just after successfully
halting the huge bus (which I appreciate the
driver for), a small Opel car that looked like a
taxi ran into the front tire of the bus. At impact,
he damaged the headlamps and radiator
instantly, while the bus was trying to make a U-
turn in front of Nigerian Brewery factory, Ibadan ,
Oyo State. Our bus driver drove away after the
hit, which, aroused anger from the ''agbero's''
who witnessed the incident. They came on a
bike, halted our bus and made it reverse back to
the its terminal. After waiting for about
30minutes for the case to be settled, we took off
once again and at about 10:30am we finally
arrived at the bus stop in Ojota, Lagos State,
Nigeria.
Well, If everything happened as planned, we
should have arrived at the early hours of the
morning. Hence I resolved never to try that
again.
I guess you might say my experience wasn't as
bad as yours. Well, feel free to share with me on
your own night journey experience.
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