Ade’s car was an old Toyota Corolla. He climbed in and opened the passenger door from inside. The stifling heat of the car combined with the overwhelming, obnoxious scent of air freshener made me cough.
‘Do you have his address?’ he asked.
Till that moment I hadn’t thought of that – I just wanted to get to Amaka. I felt stupid. His hand was at the ignition, ready to go.
‘Chief Amadi is a popular Lagosian,’ Ade said. ‘I think I know where the house is.’
He drove out of the hotel. Stationary cars stretched both ways on the dual carriage road, bumpers almost touching. He inched forward but no one let us through. Traffic lights kept changing colours unnoticed. What was a two-lane road had gained a third lane. Rickety commercial buses, packed with squeezed-in passengers, rode with one set of wheels on the pavement. Their ‘conductors’ hung from open doors, calling out destinations, soliciting for more passengers amongst the people walking the pavement which they made unsafe.
Added to the chaos were scrawny bikers stubbornly trying to navigate their beaten okada through the jam, their passengers perched on the brink of disaster behind them, enduring jerks and jolts as the drivers tried steering through the impossible maze.
Horns of all tones and pitches bleated. I wondered why they bothered to honk. No one could move. It was bedlam.