Hassle and flow (T.I.L)

Another curfew beckons! It is election time in Nigeria and the race is really heating up. Gubernatorial elections are happening this weekend and presidential the next. The radio is full of jingles for the candidates - I particularly like Babatunde Fashola’s who has ripped off the tune ‘We are the World’ and sprinkled it with some subtle slogan like ‘We Love Fashola’. Last minute a public holiday was announced for Thursday and Friday even though Saturday is the voting day. Many claim this was to effectively bar the courts from ruling, thereby throwing out the cases of those who wanted to appeal to the courts regarding their contested candidacies, and in particular this refers to vice president Atiku, whom incumbent Obasanjo has not really been in favour of lately.

So the strong man in the running right now for Nigeria’s next president is Yaradua, a Northern man who is Katsina’s governor and one of the few aspirants that does not have a file with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and actually did not run up a debt for his state during his governance. Then again a suspicious Southerner the other day dismissed Yaradua saying the only reason there is no dirt on him is because the Northerners keep these things hush hush and bribe their constituency with a few handouts while pocketing the rest.

In any case his victory may be imminent – one of the style magazines has already started running features on Yaradua’s presidential fashion sense. I particularly enjoyed seeing him wearing party-branded, PDP (People’s Democratic Party) shoes to lighten up his Sharia attire. Oh, and the other main contender is ex-dictator Buhari... I know which one I’d vote for…

So anyway everyone has been preparing for the elections, noone quite knows if there will be riots, dead calm or perhaps a discrete coup. Just in case, I have been asked by my boss to bunker up with money, phone credit, food and water, diesel and a full tank of petrol for all eventualities. Saturday, actual election day, will be spent indoors, one is only supposed to go and vote and then back home and I definitely ain’t going to try walking anywhere after my last brush with the law… I can’t help but wonder why every time this nation has to vote or be counted or perform any other large scale civic duty, the only way to solve it is to shut people into their homes and threaten to arrest them if they do otherwise.

I am continuing my story today the morning of election day, 14^th of April 2007. The day before yesterday there were riots outside the governor’s house on Bourdillon, they wanted to set fire to the residence and apparently there were shootings too. Then last night rumours were rife that there would be a curfew from 8pm onwards since election day is today. By the way, Nigeria is always full of unverifiable rumours – concerning the elections there was one that said Yaradua was dead, another one saying they’d kidnapped one of the gubernatorial candidates and now this latest one concerning house-arrest.

Temi and I needed to go out and buy something last minute so we risked it and found out by default that no curfew was going on – or if there was half of Lagos would get arrested as there were cars everywhere around Falomo… and you know that when the majority is going against the law here, there will be no enforcement, so we could rest assured. Later at night though, we had the pleasure of repeating the exercise as diesel ran out after midnight just as we were watching a film (with Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac, I say no more). This meant all lights off, beeping UPSs and total darkness in Temi’s house, even though she had hours earlier given money to one of the drivers to go and buy diesel for the gen. It now turned out that the guy couldn’t get any – there is a new shortage going on – and instead of telling her this and give back the money, he just took off and was not answering his phone. Nothing new there, happens all the time, but really irritating especially the night before curfew, knowing there will be no NEPA for the whole next day and lots of sweating indoors.

Consequently we got on the road again at half past midnight on election night, with a jerry can in the boot of the car, and woke up a friend to borrow diesel. This time around the same roads we crisscrossed hours before, heaving with activity, were completely deserted and only a few shady characters – the odd hustler, prostitute or chewing gum seller – were still out there. If we saw a car on the roadside we just drove past quickly – in Lagos chances are it might be armed robbers getting ready to strike, especially on the eve of some big event or holiday.

This is because armed robbers know that there is a lot of money changing hands in the run-up to elections (or round Christmas when everyone has saved up to buy presents for their loved ones or finance their trip home) so hitting a political person’s house could give a lucrative bounty if they can get their hands on the campaign funds or money allocated for community relations (bribes to get votes, money earmarked for hiring thugs to instigate unrest or even kill a certain candidate or party supporters). Even the usually money-hungry road police, who stop you every five yards on Awolowo road to demand ‘anyting for di weekend, ma?’, were missing and it gave the street an uncharacteristic, eerie atmosphere. Though everyone knows they are not there to uphold order or serve and protect they are just such an integral part of the night landscape of Lagos, something seems to be up when their presence is void.

All the hangout spots on Awolowo road were shut-down and dark, another first on a Friday night, as the place is generally buzzing with touts, beggars and self-appointed car-park attendants obstructing the way, running up and down the lanes to waive a car into some gutter-side ad-hoc parking spot. At this point we discovered Temi’s tank was on empty, so a not-so-attractive prospect was that we might run out of petrol on the way back to her house. (Again, her driver (another one this time) drove the car all day and happily went home without even telling her she’d need to fuel her car, let alone actually fill it up as would be part of his job description). As luck would have it, we ran into one of the last guests of CocoNut Grove, a friend of Temi’s, so we asked him to follow us by car back to her place to be on standby rescue if our own car stopped.

I am telling all of this in such detail to give a flavour for what every single routine thing in this town entails – there is so much brain power and effort that goes into the simplest undertaking and disruptions are everywhere, there’s always a need for a plan Z as all others will have fallen through and you can never rely on someone else to do what they are supposed to cause chances are they won’t, leaving you stranded at midnight the night before a curfew.

These things are starting to get to me. In the mornings I half-expect to be woken up by support staff reporting some emergency, asking for direction on what to do: ‘‘the generator has broken down’’, ‘‘there is no more diesel’’, ‘‘can I have the office key’’, ‘‘the driver came back drunk and started abusing the security guards, can you come out?’’, ‘‘the light is on in the resource centre – I need key to switch it off’’, ‘‘only one of the two security guards turned up to work, I want to report them’’. But hey, as Leonardo di Caprio eloquently put it in Blood Diamond “T.I.A.”, a.k.a. this is Africa… and he hadn’t even been to Lagos!