Oluchi Madubuike

Lagos Bus Stop If you live in Lagos or you’ve ever been there, then you sure have either used or passed by at least one Lagos bus stop. A bus stop is a location designated by the government, where commercial vehicles pick up and drop passengers. There are many of them in Lagos. You will recognise a Lagos bus stop by the typical yellow danfo buses, small-sized buses popularly called kórópé, taxis, tricycles (keke marwa) commercial motorcycles aka okada, and a throng of passengers waiting or rather hustling for the next available vehicle that will convey them to their desired destination. For orderliness and fairness, the vehicles queue up so that each picks passengers on first come first serve basis. Then there is a group of haggard-looking young and not-too-young men you’ll find there as well, wielding sticks and clubs in one hand, and in the other, a bunch of crumpled naira notes, collected from commercial drivers. These tax collectors tagged agberos are the real undoing of commercial drivers. They task each driver a certain amount of money per trip. Depending on the size of your vehicle, you can pay between 200 naira to 2000 naira! Story has it that they are revenue agents of the state government. A Lagos bus stop experiences varying degree of traffic, depending on what day of the week it is. For instance, a Monday morning is the busiest, probably because it’s the first working day of the week. You will have to leave home early enough if you must get to your destination in time. Some lagosians have to leave their houses as early as 3am to get to the bus stop, in order to board an early bus to work. If you want to catch a glimpse of what human traffic really is, then get to any Lagos bus stop on a day when commercial drivers decided to go on strike, or when there is blockade as a result of road construction. By and large, as long as you’re not among the I-don’t-enter-public-transport group, then you’ll find the bus stop very useful in your day to day life in Lagos.

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