INTRO

I recently received an email that detailed the depredation of armed robbers in the streets of Lagos over the September /October period. It was mostly focused on V/I and Ikoyi and primarily on the bank robberies and the like. Those incidents are rare, in that you can go your whole life in Lagos without being in one, however the more mundane incidents that affect you are rarely commented on. That’s right, I would argue that almost everyone has a story of a direct encounter with an armed robber on the streets of Lagos. I would also bet that everybody has personal knowledge of someone that has been in direct contact with these men of the night. By the grace of God, I am in the group that knows people who have been involved, and I decided to bring you a few tidbits that I had gleaned from some of their stories. Basically you can read the following as a few theories primarily concerned with avoiding armed robbers on the streets of Lagos.

JUST DON'T DO IT

“Just don't do it” is like abstinence for road users. The logic is also similar; if you are in your house the thieves cannot find you (well at least the road thieves sha). Going out only when you need to, is the best way to avoid being caught up in the random vagaries of the Lagos robbery scene. This philosophy is frequently espoused by parents of expatriate returnees :D

MOVE IT TO YOUR RIGHT!!!

This piece of advice is best illustrated by the accompanying story. My colleague was at the Lekki 1st roundabout one day when someone came up to his window in the time honoured style of Lagos robbers. The robber tapped on his glass and demanded the usual “phone watch wallet” combination. I think the robber had a crowbar rather than a gun. My friend was on the right side of the roundabout close to the curb, so he took time to stall, pretending he was reaching for his valuables, and he climbed the curb and zoomed off. So from that day on he stayed on the right side, allowing him access to the curb if robbers also come calling.

YOU DON'T EXIST !!!

The story here is a work of beauty that comes to you courtesy of another colleague; though this time his wife was the participant. She had been confronted by thieves on Ozumba Mbadiwe on the way from V/I to Lekki. Other than the frequency, the story is noteworthy because she was approached twice and her strategy worked both times. As you all know repeatability is the hallmark of a good scientific experiment. So a thief once walked up to her and knocked on the glass demanding the bag and the contents therein. My friend’s wife proceeded to look straight ahead leaving the robber tapping on the window trying to get her attention. She continued to ignore said robber and when traffic moved she moved. Just like that it worked, once and then it happened again and she did it again.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD

A friend of mine was on Osborne one day in traffic, a road with no curbs :D, when he was approached by two men who walked up to the side of his car. Standing side by side, they knocked on the glass, and one of them flashed the pistol. He was sitting there stuck, wondering what he was going to do when suddenly traffic opened up in front of him. Not stopping to think, he gunned his car into the available space and left the robbers in his wake. He proved an inspiration to others in his lane, as they quickly followed his action. The thieves were daunted by this and faded back into the bushes. He was hero for a day as the surrounding drivers hailed him for his bravery.

AKA SCAPEGOAT

I used to be a fan of the motorway variation of this technique during my long distance drives to and from university. The motorway variation was to have someone in front of you at all times going faster than you were so if a speed patrol was clocking someone it would pull him over for speeding first. The robber variation works the same way only you are worried about robbers and not cops :D. I know at least two people who have gotten away from armed robbers using this tactic, both were on third mainland which lends itself very well to the strategy. The caveat obviously is that it doesn't always work, like the time my friend was driving through Virginia and got pulled over as the last of a group of six speeders.

CONCLUSION

In closing I should say that there is no error proof way to avoid being robbed in Lagos. Granted it is kind of obvious but I thought I should say it anyway. We tend to put ourselves in the hands of God, though I suspect for most of us it is a rote thing like some Catholics and their rosaries. Still I thought I would share these stories because there is nothing like good news to brighten up a day.

PS. Someone sabotaged the main internet cable in Nigeria so access may be intermittent for a while (it took them 4 weeks to fix it last time). I will try to be as consistent as I can, but no promises. Laters.

As most of the readers of my blog know, Nigeria recently celebrated its 48th birthday. Nigeria's birthday is also our national day of pontification. It is that special day during which pundits of all stripes, tribes, and colors (ok maybe not colours) come out of the woodwork and proceed to tell us what is wrong with our nation. Once in a great while the more brazen, nay foolhardy, of the pundits also proceed to tell us how to fix the problems that ail us.

However I noticed that this year there were a lot more proposals made than in previous years. It seems that Yar 'Adua's year of paralysis had emboldened our pundits. Everybody had studied up it seemed, and now had the wonder drug that was going to cure our nation's ills. A cursory glance through the proposals reminded me of a joke that runs something like this:

" if you think about it everybody is going to hell. Every major religion states that if you don't believe in their God you will go to hell. Therefore we are all going to hell, because there is at least one religion you don't believe in"

Almost every plan contradicted every other plan. For a plan that said "give more resource control to the Niger Delta", you have a plan saying "they have enough,". For a plan that said "privatise the power sector." you have a plan that said "government is the answer to power." And so on and so forth.

When you decide to drill down in the plans to discover why the people seeing the same data would come to different conclusions, you quickly realise that there is nothing to drill down to for the most part. The statement of the plan is the plan. More interestingly, implementing the "plan" is tantamount to achieving the plan. The concept of execution seems to be lost on all our national "saviors". We have become used to "commissioning upon conception and not upon completion" and our "plans" reflect that. This is not a particularly Nigerian phenomenon, I mean look at the Paulson US bailout plan which is a plan to have plan in the future. The last statement was not to excuse our failings, but was a fig leaf a la "there is corruption everywhere, no?"

So this time next next year (or maybe before then) when someone starts waxing on about the solutions to Nigeria's problems ask them two questions: "Why will your plan work?" and "How will it work?" If they can't answer both then is either a) the plan will not work or b) they are the wrong person to implement said plan.

In closing, I must admit that "the How" is the main reason that I have not been writing about Nigeria's issues recently. Having seen how important implementation is in this country of mine, I am hesitant to jump out and scream "Eureka" like the rest of them. However I am still talking Nigeria (shout out to Nilla wherever you are) and will continue to do so. Laters.