My dictionary defines "short cut" as a route that is shorter than the usual one. This shows that my dictionary is not always right. In everyday life a short cut can be a stab in the back.
Not so long ago I set out from Agbara to be present at a friend’s seventieth birthday celebration somewhere in Lagos Island. Under normal conditions the journey would have taken me along the Lagos-Badagry expressway as far as Mile Two, from where I would have proceeded to Orile Iganmu, then to Surulere and finally over Eko Bridge to Lagos Island. It would all have taken about ninety minutes.
It didn’t happen that way. The driver that came with the borrowed car was one of those restless spirits who, at the first sign of stalled traffic ahead, immediately begin to take evasive action. Turning off the main highway and ducking in out of byways and side streets, they would travel in ever widening circles, in the mistaken belief that not to stop moving necessarily translated into making progress.
That morning, the driver took me on a mystery tour, through purported short cuts that substantially increased the distance to my destination. Somewhere along the route, after I had looked for — and failed to find — familiar landmarks along the way, I asked the driver where we were.
"Cardoso," he replied, manoeuvring the car into a narrow street.
"Why are we here?"
"I am avoiding go-slow."
It was twenty minutes to the time fixed for the party I was attending, and there I was, stuck behind a truck that was completely blocking the road while it unloaded crates of soft drinks in a side street in Cardoso. We had gone miles out of my way.
Twenty minutes later, after we had zigged and zagged through Cardoso, I again asked: "Where are we now?"
"Ajegunle," was his reply. He should have said deep inside Ajegunle, which would have been closer to the truth.
Never in all the years I had lived in and around Lagos had it occurred to me that one could come within smelling distance of Ajegunle when travelling from Agbara to Lagos Island.
When we finally emerged from Ajegunle, I found myself in Mobil Road, a locality that I last visited when it was still known as Malu Road, at a time when it appeared to be incurably infested by unruly cattle and arrogant herdsmen.
To cut a long story short I got to MUSON Centre, venue of the birthday celebration, just in time to listen to the closing speeches.
"If we had not taken that short cut," the driver said, fishing for compliment, "we would not have even met anybody here at all."
In other words, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.
Now, on to the railway. As a time-saving device the Nigerian railway was a dead loss, even before its dying days. The corporation that ran it should have drawn attention to this by prominently displaying on its platforms notices that said: ANYBODY WHO ATTEMPTS TO USE OUR TRAINS AS A SHORT CUT TO ANY POINT IN NIGERIA HAS ONLY HIMSELF TO BLAME FOR WHATEVER BEFALLS HIM.
Many years ago, before the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was constructed, a journey between the two cities used to take up to six hours, with the worst points of delay being at Maryland in Ikeja, Ikorodu Town, the Shagamu/Iperu axis and just before Idi-Ayunre. One day, to save my family this agony of long delays along the way, and also to give my children their first experience of train travel (they were then aged between nine and three years) I arranged for them to travel by train from Lagos to Ibadan. It turned out to be not one of my brightest ideas.
When, at 11.30 a.m., I took them to Iddo Station to board a train that was scheduled to depart at 12 noon, there was a train standing at the platform all right, but there was no locomotive engine attached to it. I settled wife and children into their reserved compartment, and then waited. At about one o’clock the engine arrived and was coupled to the train. At half-past one, we were still waiting. At a quarter to two a man arrived and climbed into the driver’s cabin. We all thought that the long wait was over, and the children began to wave goodbye. They stopped waving when it became clear that the man had only gone to the driver’s cabin to shut down the engine, after which he got out and walked away.
At twenty minutes past two o’clock the same man came back, restarted the engine, and moved the train about one hundred metres down the rail lines, far enough to get it clear of the platform. There it again stopped. No announcement was made, and no explanation given. For over forty minutes I was left standing on the platform, staring at the back of the train. There was a regulation, then strictly observed, that being anywhere other than on the platform amounted to trespassing, so I left the station and went home, leaving the train still standing where it had been "parked".
I received a phone call from Ibadan at a quarter to nine that night, informing me that my family had arrived there safely — at twenty minutes past eight o’clock
Things were no better on the day I decided to travel from Lagos to Ibadan by air. This also was before the expressway was constructed, and going through what is now referred to as "the old route" took forever. When Nigeria Airways came to the rescue by introducing a service that cut traveling time to thirty minutes, it seemed too good to be true — and it was.
The plane was a Fokker 27, and its route was Lagos-Ibadan-Benin-Enugu. I checked in, as requested, at 6.30 a.m. for a flight that was to take off at 7.30. At half-past seven we were told that, due to poor visibility over Ibadan airport (this was in December) the flight was delayed. At 8.30 the announcement was repeated. At 9.15 we were told to board the plane. We took our seats and waited — for thirty-five minutes. Then a flight attendant told us to disembark because visibility over Ibadan was still bad. At 10.15 a voice announced that intending passengers for Port Harcourt should extinguish their cigarettes and proceed to board their plane. It turned out that the plane they were to board was the same one from which I and other passengers for Ibadan, Benin etc had been evacuated.
At about 12.45 p.m. another plane was readied for the aborted flight. We boarded it and — surprise, surprise — the plane took off. I had a window seat, and spent the time looking down at what could be seen of the expressway under construction. The construction company’s yellow coloured heavy equipment and blue coloured site offices dominated a surreal landscape marked by mounds of brown earth and heaps of stone chips. Minutes later the rusted roofs of old Ibadan, came into view, and then disappeared, to be replaced by the mounds of brown earth and the yellow construction equipment I had seen earlier. Some minutes later we were back at the starting point of our journey — on the tarmac at Ikeja airport. For a long moment there was an uneasy silence. Then the Captain’s voice came over the tannoy, explaining that the aircraft had been unable to land at Ibadan airport because of poor visibility. He directed passenger for Ibadan to disembark, while those for Benin and Enugu should remain in the aircraft for their flight.
Again, to cut a long story short, visibility over Ibadan finally improved, and we got an aircraft that took us there. We landed at Ibadan airport at about 3.15 p.m.
As we filed out of the aircraft and made our way into the airport building, we passed near a cluster of passengers who were waiting to board the plane for the return flight to Lagos. They gave us dark looks, as if we were responsible for the delay.
Yes to seat belts
The corpulent man squeezed himself into the driving seat of one of those small bullet shaped cars that are supposed to be roomier than they looked. To be fair, the car accommodated the man’s bulk but it was, as one might say, a tight fit.
The problem came when he tried to fasten the seat belt. Something had gone wrong with the belt’s mechanism, and it took a lot of pulling and twisting to get the belt round him. Somewhere along the Lagos-Badagry expressway his car was scraped by another car whose driver was trying to pass in stalled traffic. Ordinarily the corpulent man, so clearly in the right, would have jumped out to "deal" with the erring driver and in all probability a roadside punch-up would have resulted, but the wretched belt very efficiently pinioned him to his seat, and no amount of heaving and straining could set him free. The other driver went scot-free, but he may not be so lucky next time.
Nigerian Vanguard
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Well in that case it's...let's see... 7 years, there about 
