Mark Webster (1979): How to Survive Lagos

I'm slowly catching up with my notes on the various issues of West Africa magazine that I'm flicking through between writing sessions. Here's a short commentary on life in Lagos by Mark Webster, then of the Financial Times, where the piece had first been published 1 October 1979 – in a special issue on Nigeria that I still have to get my hands on.

In the spirit of all things lorries and lorry art, here's the bit of the piece that laments the city's road maintenance.

Bits and Pieces from West Africa Magazine (Again)

I've been flicking through West Africa magazine in my breaks again. It's quite a useful exercise a change of pace when I'm stuck, a source that improves my grasp on Nigerian history, some of the developments that hadn't quite made my history lessons and at various times plenty of references (sadly) to the state of roads, accidents and (roadside) robberies in Nigeria. There is also this story of a manufacturer in Ogun State starting a business recycling motor scraps based 'entirely on motor scraps in its production.'

'[H]undred miles an hour ... only speed a self-respecting Nigerian considers worthy of him' - Theodore Dalrymple on his Travels in West Africa

I can't focus today. So, I have abandoned the more academic literature I was to read today and, instead, settled down with a travelogue. This one was written by Anthony Daniels under his alias Theodore Dalrymple (no relation of that other travel writer, William Dalrymple, as far as I can gather), a doctor, psychiatrist and journalist. After two years of working in Tanzania, Dalrymple decided to cross Africa from Zanzibar to Mali by public transport, by bus, lorry, train, boat and canoe. His account lacks the historical and analytical depths of William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain, another travelogue I have recently read and enjoyed. Nevertheless, the book contains some gems – and, indeed, some rather lovely accounts of busses and lorries.

'Of all of my memories of ... Nigeria the most lasting is that of the endless roads' (Robert Collis 1970)

I stumbled across this book with a wonderful chapter on roads and driving in Nigeria, Robert Collis' (1970) Nigeria in Conflict.[1] Collis worked as Head of the Paediatric Department at the Medical School in Ibadan and Professor of Paediatrics in Lagos. In many ways it is just another account of Nigeria by an expatriate working there in the late 1950s. However, it is well written. – There is for example a rather incriminating account of a conversation he had with an English businessman operating in Nigeria in the chapter on corruption:

'One simply can't get anywhere … without bribing one's way right down the line. These Nigerians are sharks!'

'Isn't it worse for you who imagine yourself a Christian gentleman … to be giving bribes than it is for these dishonest chaps to accept them?' I asked.

'Look,' he said angrily, ' if I didn't the Americans would.'

(Collis 1970: 184)

The car in your hand is an aeroplane' - Niyi Osundare's (1986) Song of the Nigerian Driver

The other day I found another poem that fits the subject of my current project, i.e. lorry decorations. To pay respect where it is due, I acknowledge my debt to Christiane Fioupou (1994) who mentioned this poem in her study of representations of the road in Wole Soyinka's works. I may have found it eventually – I am currently still flicking through issues of the weekly West Africa in which it has been published. However, it would have taken me a long time.

D.Ch.E. Ugwuegbu (1977): The Stop Sign is for the Other Guy

The other day I stumbled across a study of Nigerian drivers that had been published by a member of the Psychology Department of the University of Ibadan, Denis Chimaeze E. Ugwuegbu. It was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Vol. 62, Issue 5, 574-77) in 1977 (The side I linked to links through to the journey but the article is behind a paywall).Today I finally got my hands on the hard copy.

I generally don't have much patience for psychological studies – I don't quite know how to properly read the statistical analyses that they present – but I liked the title of this one: 'The Stop Sign is for the Other Guy.' I know, I know. This makes me sound incredibly superficial. In this case, however, the headline kept its promise and I found some well put observations that will probably make it into the working paper on cowboys on Nigerian roads that I must have mentioned before.