The good, the bad and the outright nasty

I heard a woman screaming ole ! ole! (thief ! thief !) about 2 days ago. That is not an uncommon scene in a city like Lagos, but what caught my attention was the time the incidence occurred: at about 2.30 a.m. The first thing that came to my mind was 'what in heaven's name are you doing outside by this time on Lagos Island? '. It turned out that the dude was not trying to rob her, rather, he was trying to rape her while she slept outside in a makeshift bed beside a kiosk.Dare devil, like a bonafide Lagos Islander, she chased him through the maze of sharp twists and turns of the surrounding streets till he disappeared.

And then, she came back to give US, the weaklings that did not have the balls to come to her rescue, a piece of her mind, she rained abuses and insults up and down our street and the unfortunate co-joining streets. The sad little piece of her mind lasted for about 2 hours with very short breaks in between. Drama, you would say, but unfortunately, sad stories like this end pretty messed up sometimes. A lot can be deduced from this story, pointers that things are not sitting right in our society. A homeless woman getting raped in the middle of the night by an absolutely irresponsible night crawler.

Violence, rape, robbery lurk in these streets. A typical Lagos Islander laughs when he/she hear s of novel stories of 'living hard' by the likes of 50 cents, there is even a joke about Tupac Shakur (R.I.P.) that says if he (Tupac) was alive and living in Nigeria, a night at Alagbon or even Lions Building would have eroded his thuggishness. As a matter of fact he would be an 'ajebota' on Lagos Island.

December 25th 2007, I was given a welcome back scenario. Prior to that day I had spent about 6 years away from the Island, on a kinda on and off basis while schooling in Benin and a little more than 3 years working all over the eastern parts of the country. Seun Kuti {the look alike and talented son of late Afrobeat Legend : Fela Anikulapo Kuti } was billed to play to commemorate the eve of the Annual Oko Faaji Fanty Carnival. We all expected some kinda violence or another, but the two most outstanding occurrencies blew my mind. In all my life I had not seen/ witnessed a night like that before. Let me share the scenes with you:

Scene one:
Chilling with friends in their upstair apartment, we had chosen the spot cos' it overlooked the stage that had been set up for Seun Kuti's performance, we shared drinks, goodies and they brought out the left over fried meat from the Sallah Festival that just passed. Enuff people had come back from "away" and the air over Lagos Island was all electrical. Seun Kuti's backup singer/dancers had started testing the mics and the show was about to start, that's when it happened !. As if on cue, people started gravitating towards the stage in anticipation, during the rush for the best spots we noticed two outstretched hands reach for a friend's neck, just in view, below the balcony where we stood and before you could say ole ! the necklace and pendants were gone. The owner of the neck/necklace and pendants didn't even know and if we were not staring in his direction, trying to get his attention, we would not have known. It took him about a minute to realise his piece had gone from his neck.

To be sincere, that whole act did not surprise me, not at all. I was born on Lagos Island, and I had seen worse shit. What I wasn't ready for is what followed next. As my friend noticed the necklace had gone, he started harrassing, slapping and searching everyone close to where he stood. Immediately, without any form of communication between them, the criminal's friends shielded him while he slipped the necklace and pendants into his mouth. Since we saw everything , we started shouting from our vantage point for the search team to frisk the criminal. Men ! NA SO THE GUY SWALLOW THE NECKLACE AND THE PENDANTS DEM O ! {the criminal swallowed the necklace and pendants}. I had heard gists of this kinda prowess, but meeeeeeeen... what followed was scary . He was dragged, beaten, his clothes were torn and this guy denied his involvement. Thank God for Prison Break, some of us suggested giving him orange juice and laxatives.That was when he started begging that he'll give us the necklace and pendants but we should make it a private affair, that after all he was just a hustler,trying to make a living. We got the necklace and pendants back and a reprisal attack followed about 2 hours into the show {...just to let us know we can't be spoiling business}. Two of my friends were rushed to a nearby clinic for treatment from broken bottle cuts.


To be continued...

The Chrysalis

I live in hell, NO, seriously I do live in hell.
I didn't just wake up, pack my bags and decide to live there though. I was born bred {bread}, buttered, battered and waiting for the next wave of chain {change} reactions. Since I am not given to self pity then I won't or rather I can't blame my parents. It wasn't always like this.

You see, Lagos Island {Marina, Olowogbowo, isale Eko, Adeniji, Onola, Campus, Oju-ina etc etc} was the bubbly commercial nerve center of the state, the gravitation towards the state of
eternal inferno has always been there, and kinda gradual, but like a conspiracy, we all ignored it.
We could not be bothered, as far as we had our parties, our guinea jacquards, our brochades and
when about 16 people could inhabit a one room apartment and share communal toilets.
What could we care?

If this was to be a musical piece, the theme would be rape, murder, torture, gun running,
assasination, blasphemy, paedophilia, robbery, petty stealing and I'll leave the rest to your
imagination. You can't ask a friend to come visit, ehn! lai, lai would be the response.
A friend even compared the Lagos Island situation to a scene in the movie
'The good, the bad, the ugly'. If you've seen that movie, project your mind to that scene where
the bad dude was caught and they start reading out his endless atrocities at his execution...bottom line was, the dude's sins were too many to mention that they summed it up with 'all the crimes under the sun'. That's the situation in my part of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I am not proud of the situation and would help reverse it if that can be achieved. What I'm going to be doing on this blog for the next couple of days or weeks or months is outline/showcase {right word?} what has become the twisted culture of the infamous Lagos Island. Whenever I can, I will provide still shots to butress my point. So, take my hand {come on, don't be scared} and see my part of the world, with your own eyes. I'm not asking you to be the judge, it's not a lab/clinical situation. Arm chair scholars stay out of this; you ruin everything.
This is the real deal, a people, a community, a race in distress.
So why don't you take a walk with me...

Hey, I got a blog space

Happy New year everybody...i finally decided to start blogging.I still can't figure out the compulsion to just keep writing stuff (I guess it keeps a lotta people from blabbing on and on)...well, I have been getting loose tongued these days and eroding my famous 'cool' exterior.
I hope (sincerely) that I turn out good contents though...Keep your fingers crossed...and re-visit my blog.
Thanks for stopping by.
Ciao