Dear LAGOSIANS...

Dear Lagosians,

For some reason best known to some of us (TRAFFIC being the reason), we have not been having a great day. Although, that is not why I am here. I am writing this letter to the dear residents of Lagos to please stop blaming my dear client, BAD ROAD for the TRAFFIC in Lagos.

Please note, Mr Bad Road cannot cause traffic, it can only reduce the speed at which you drive a car on the road or the number of cars that can pass a particular spot at a time; but it cannot cause a standstill for hours. I know some people are rolling their eyes and asking, "So, what causes traffic? Well, thank you for asking, and yes I have an answer to your question.

HUMAN STUPIDITY has always and will always be the cause of traffic in Lagos. I know you are asking, How? Please follow me on this journey as I explain to you that Human Stupidity is the culprit in this Traffic crime and not my client, Mr Bad Road.

Human Stupidity can be defined as the selfish, senseless, impatient, careless, and greedy nature of man, which further involves a lack of basic personal ethics, a sense of entitlement, self centeredness, and a conscious ignorance of road rules and regulations by its user resulting to Traffic and other issues in the world. 

To break this down, I will explain the key words in the definition and how it results to Traffic. 

SELFISH: Most road users only care about where they are going and focus all their attention on getting there, without putting into consideration that there are other road users on the road, who are also going somewhere. People don't know that their actions and inactions on the road affect the lives and safety of other road users.

This selfish, careless and self centered attitude leads to careless driving, which in most cases leads to a standstill or an accident, which in turn leads to traffic. 

SENSELESS: It is sad to know, but some people are really, truly and unfortunately, senseless. This type of people have very bad timing and driving skills, and in most cases, they show this at the most unwanted times. For example, in a situation where the road is bad and only two vehicles can pass at any given time, they will try to overtake (as the third vehicle) and cause a jam, thereby causing traffic. Their senselessness is unbelievable to a sane person, because they succeed everytime in exhibiting actions meant for fools; and making sensible road users pay for their lack of basic common sense by spending hours in traffic.

GREED: After increasing the transport fare by at least 50 percent, some of the public transportation drivers don't have the courtesy to drive you safely to your destination. They are busy thinking of the next set of passengers they would carry at a higher fare.

This is worsened by the people set out to catch and prosecute road offenders. Instead of prosecuting the road offenders, they collect money from them and let them go. This is really annoying and makes one angrier while in traffic.

IMPATIENT: For some very unexplainable reason, people are really in a hurry to get to nowhere these days. I say nowhere because I don't know where you are going and if you have a fatal accident, the person will really end up going NO-WHERE. People sometimes delude themselves by thinking they are indispensable, that without them the thing they are rushing to won't take place. How funny, you just need to fall sick and see how fast someone else will take over and do a better/not so good/worse job. The point here is that, someone else would surely do the job.

Our impatience and lack of personal ethics like patience, obeying set down rules and regulations, being careful with your life and the life of others, in one way or the other leads to traffic (in the best case scenario) or a fatal accident (in the worst case scenario), which still leads to traffic (2 in 1 tragedy).

SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT: Some people believe that their ancestors have paid a price (unknown to us) which grants them the power to always be considered as a top priority in issues regarding road issues. For the record, they are not law enforcement agents or ambulances, but for some reason (we don't care about), they believe that you have no right to talk to or correct them when they do wrong things like passing one-way, over taking wrongly, packing in wrong spots, being on the wrong lane, over speeding, among other wrongdoings. 

In a bid to correct the wrong of these entitled fellows, traffic happens because there are some people who will never allow them get away with their wrongdoings or allow them pass, thereby blocking the road. Other times, an argument or fight ensues and ends up causing traffic.

CONSCIOUS IGNORANCE OF RULES AND REGULATIONS: The way people ignore the road signs and the code of conduct associated with road usage, you would almost be convinced that there are no rules and regulations about road usage. The way the rules are ignored, one wonders how some of them got their driving license, and if the licence is really authentic or falsified. Just obeying a traffic light is impossible for some people. They forget that as they are disobeying it, someone else is obeying the rules, and this could lead to a lot of problems like accident and traffic.

To be able to eradicate or reduce the number of hours spent in traffic, we need to discipline ourselves and obey road usage rules and regulations. We need to do this and stop making excuses or pointing fingers at bad road or the population of Lagos as reason for the traffic.

Thank you very much for understanding and coming this far. Take care of yourself and please let us be sensible, patient, law abiding citizen and work together to end traffic in Lagos.


Yours sincerely,
Olaa.


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