Ambode & the Lagosians

Author’s Note: I wrote this on the 27th of December, 2015. I didn’t want to post it then for the reason I don’t post most of my work, no real reason. While Lagos and Nigeria have changed some since then, it’s still a pretty nice read.

So it’s no secret that Lagosians voted Ambode in to be the governor of Lagos in 2015 (mostly in the name of continuity). We weren’t ready to risk what the alternative might have been. Almost immediately it seemed like a bad move, the traffic in the next month was unbearable. People angrily sent tweets to his Twitter account asking him what he was doing and going to do about it. He usually responded with non-convincing answers suggesting they were ‘thinking’ about it or he asked people to send emails to him, which, frankly, made us more upset and angry.

Things did improve and become like normal and he started fixing roads and put Lastma officials and cute new cars on the road and spent lottery money on cool police cars and we’re largely fine now and slightly better off in my opinion! But the other day someone tweeted at him, that he, the Lagosian hopes that he, Ambode, knows that there was heavy traffic in, he mentioned three areas. And I was just amused. What was he expecting?

I mean, Ambode’s team wasn’t great at answering questions on social media, they had proven that just months back. And he was always about asking us to send those emails with our complaints. And frankly, haha, was he expecting that Ambode would get the notifications on his Android phone (I don’t know, he feels like an Android guy) and would immediately read his tweets and say something like: “Oh my God, people, there’s traffic in Festac right now, what are we doing about it?” Lol. Of course that wasn’t happening. Ambode can’t even use Twitter (I’m not sure; but I’m enjoying the freedom of being able to post potential lies about politicians till the senate passes the social media bill).

But I totally understood the Lagos Twitter user angrily ranting at Ambode on Twitter. I mean, one of the worst feelings in the world is the feeling of being helpless and when you’re stuck in a massive traffic you’re angry and you need someone to blame. And the truth is, the last bit of control or decision making to changes things about the traffic issue was exercised by us Lagosians when we voted in Ambode to run the state.

To make sure our state worked, hitch free and without traffic we queued up to vote Ambode. What was this traffic we were facing? For Christ sake, why was the person we decided would be the custodian of the state and be solely responsible for everything that occurred in a state of more than 15 million people not doing anything about the goddam traffic we were facing?

We weren’t impressed when we heard rumours he went clubbing one night. Why was he clubbing when we were facing three hour traffics? Goddamnit! Did he think everything was fine? Is that what he thought? Yes, sometimes he’s at fault (kinda) but sometimes these things will happen and it’s not going to be Ambode’s fault.

In no way is the reaction of Lagosians insane though. Being powerless is horrible especially when you’re supposed to have shifted control to someone, namely Ambode in this case. One day I was in a horrible traffic and I was so pissed and angry. And then I remembered Ambode and I became even angrier. I kept imagining: so Ambode is probably at work now and here I am, stuck in traffic, not at work. So he’s at work, only God knows what he’s doing. His AC is blowing him and he’s probably looking at some fancy papers or something and this is happening here? What’s he doing about this? Why is he comfortable in his office, in his fancy meeting, with his fancy AC probably (despite all the vows he had made to change things) feeling unperturbed about all the stress I’m facing? I voted him and this was how he was choosing to treat me? I was so angry.

I and Lagosians were angry at him, probably imagining him doing nothing in his office. But the truth about it can be demonstrated when we remember how badly we took those pictures of him being in that task force busting, was it druggies or area boys? We don’t care about seeing him in action either. We don’t need that bullshit propaganda. What do we want then? Results! When do we want them? Now! Therein lies the problem. Because that’s not how life works.