A Day From, 'Lagos to Kampala'
It is said that, it takes 4 days 5 hours from Lagos to Kampala. However, it didn’t even take up to 24 hours this time. Well, that’s because the journey was from Lagos to Ibadan.
Have you ever been stopped by those roadside officials or you’ve heard stories? Some of these people we know that I’m talking about will be like ‘’oga pack your car, show me your papers, come down, open your boot’’…, or they see you with that particular hair on that particular outfit, with that particular car, they will be like,
‘‘Oga, show me your phone, open your bags…’’ calm down. They aren’t arm robbers oh.
We were halfway through the journey towards getting to our final destination, we suddenly got stopped by some roadside officials. Some of us, who were already tired of sitting down, having our butts hurt and worried about getting to our destination were suddenly wide awake. We started to ask amidst ourselves, ‘’what’s going on’’ as the head officer told everyone to come down. He suddenly spotted one of the passengers, who was on dreads, telling him to bring his load for search. Already, we saw it coming, they always come for the dreads on head and the ripped jeans ones.
As they began searching his bags and pockets, some of us heard the driver saying to the passenger who was being searched, ‘’don’t let them search your pockets and bags, by themselves, bring out your things by yourself’’. No doubt, the passenger probably didn’t hear what the driver said. As they continue to search him desperately, one of the passengers said underneath, ‘’the guy is shaking, he’s scared’’. It’s either he was guilty or he was probably scared, we couldn’t tell for sure.
Suddenly, the head officer instructed the driver to open the booth, he wanted to search every single bags inside the bus and at the same time. We all started complaining, telling the head officer, the load was too much to dismantle. It would be difficult to arrange back and we had a long way to go. As we were still trying to persuade the head officer, one of the officers overhead the driver telling one of the passengers, ‘’these people are crazy, they will intentionally put stuffs inside your pockets and bags and frame you for it’’.
Some of us were shocked as it was our first time, hearing that. On hearing that, the officer angrily told him to open the booth by force, angrily saying, ‘’how dare he say that’? The driver became defensive about what he said too, saying there was nothing the officer could do and what he said was true. They were both doing strong head for themselves.
While others were being quiet, some were murmuring, complaining and standing up for themselves. Those who weren’t interested in the drama going on, just wanted to leave the place, eat and reach home safely.
When they were all done searching this passenger, and argument between the driver and the officer came to an end, they finally let us go.
As we continued our journey, some passengers started talking about what happened earlier, ‘’Those people eh, them dey craze, if they wanted us to open that boot and dismantle the loads, it would happen and there is nothing we could have done, they are wild eh, they are wicked. They can fix stuffs into your pockets, frame you for it and arrest you. Fear them.’’