Uncle Fash, Don't Let Us Die In That Sardine Tin Called BRT!

yetunde oyeleke

April 14, 2014 3:47 PM

Taking a ride in a Lagos BRT bus as a member of the standing committee is an experience that will leave you rattled...

I made a very terrible mistake today while coming to the office today...

As usual, I was up at 5am, at the BRT bus stop under Mile 12 bridge sometime around 6:20am and I joined 'a line' as has been my daily ritual since coming to Lagos.

Again, as usual, I asked if the line In joined was 'sitting' or 'standing' line and was duly informed I was on the sitting line.

Assured, I followed the winding line Facebooking, as bus after bus loaded and left.

Well, 30 minutes later, I discovered that I was actually on the standing line, doomed to stand from Mile 12 all the way to CMS! With the traffic, that implied a near 2-hour stand!

One look at the real 'sitting' line and another at my time timepiece told me "O boy, you better stand fo hia." Leaving my standing line would place me behind almost 200 people and I was like the 15th person on the 'standing' line.

So I marched on into the bus, one of the nearly 40 members of the 'standing committee'. Do you know that we had to raise alarm before they stopped sending in more ‘standing’ passengers.

sandwich of living flesh

woven tighter than a mesh

osmosis of body aromas

this is transport enmasse!

You know, when you open a tin of Sardine, you see them tightly meshed with oil floating around. We were packed the same way, with fouled air acting as the oil.

Unfortunately, I had a devilish armpit in front of my face and I nearly puked before we got to CMS.

Again, the standing ordeal was another challenge with huge guys shoving and poking as they fought for space all the way to our destination – bickering appeared here and there.

I was shoved around so much that my waist was out of joint by the time I alighted at CMS – over an hour later!

Uncle Fash, it is sad that humans will be so transported in a city of Lagos’s standing!

It is even sadder still that both the standing passengers and the sitting passengers pay equal fare. Wouldn’t it be fair to have reduced fare for the torment they would have to endure?

Abeg Uncle Fashola, can we limit the number of standing passengers in the BRT to say 20?

Again, I think we need more buses and more terminals to make sure that people can wait for the ‘next’ bus or go to the next bus station.

As it is, one day, a passenger will die of asphyxiation! Nafo dia tory go start.

Eko o ni baje o!

yetunde oyeleke