How to drive in Nigeria
Door: Thessa
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10 Oktober 2008 | Nigeria, Suleja
I drive around every day and enjoy it –and thank whoever’s up there for each day without an accident. Accidents happen here. A lot. That you can buy a driving license for about 25 euro doesn’t help of course… You don’t really need to know how to drive though. These are some of the general rules:
- The claxon is the voice of your car. And since you live in the land of the loud people, you use it to express everything from mild annoyance to sheer brutality.
- Driving is like skiing: the one coming up from the back is the one who watches out what you are doing and who will stop when you make a funny move. Ideally.
- Drive very close to the other cars. Others can’t see your indication lights anymore? No problem, use your hand to indicate your direction.
- Overtaking is possible always. Also when you can’t see the road ahead, when you are on a small 2-lane road, or when you drive ridiculously fast within a village. Use the claxon and hope everything you could collide with will back off.
- The break is your best friend. Servicing your car to make sure everything works, is a luxury though.
- You can make any move you want. The more difficult it becomes for others to anticipate your moves, the better. A possible accident will be their fault, not yours.
- Majority voting applies: if enough people think there’s a lane, then there is a lane. Five lanes can be created on a 3-lane road.
- Drive as fast as your car can take you. Depending on the state of the car that could be 50 on a highway or 160 when going through a little town.
- You don’t put on your lights until it’s pitch dark. Once you do put them on, you put them on their brightest. No use having lights if you can’t blind other people with them.
- Survival of the fittest: bigger cars have right of way.
- If there is a bend in the road with 2 lanes, you will use both lanes and keep switching between them, thus preventing people to pass (and thereby causing even more go slow)
- Should there be an interesting person of the opposite sex in a car nearby you can start flirting, in which case it’s permitted to forget about the rest of traffic.
- If you want to cross a very busy junction, you move slowly but steadily ahead so as to block the road. If a deadlock doesn’t occur, you can pass. Alternatively, you will end up spending many minutes using your claxon and shouting at other people to move.
- If rain falls, you forget how to drive altogether.
Some people say Nigeria is a dangerous country. They say that you’ll be lucky to get away unscathed by kidnappers or armed robbers, without falling victim to malaria, or without hypertension complaints due to overall chaos and corruption. When people hear I live in Nigeria the common question to ask is “isn’t that very dangerous?!”. Nobody wants to come to Nigeria out of fear, while people get crushed in a stampede towards South-Africa –a country far more dangerous than Nigeria. Still, when I think of the way Nigerians drive, my confidence about the safety of the country does falter a bit…
- The claxon is the voice of your car. And since you live in the land of the loud people, you use it to express everything from mild annoyance to sheer brutality.
- Driving is like skiing: the one coming up from the back is the one who watches out what you are doing and who will stop when you make a funny move. Ideally.
- Drive very close to the other cars. Others can’t see your indication lights anymore? No problem, use your hand to indicate your direction.
- Overtaking is possible always. Also when you can’t see the road ahead, when you are on a small 2-lane road, or when you drive ridiculously fast within a village. Use the claxon and hope everything you could collide with will back off.
- The break is your best friend. Servicing your car to make sure everything works, is a luxury though.
- You can make any move you want. The more difficult it becomes for others to anticipate your moves, the better. A possible accident will be their fault, not yours.
- Majority voting applies: if enough people think there’s a lane, then there is a lane. Five lanes can be created on a 3-lane road.
- Drive as fast as your car can take you. Depending on the state of the car that could be 50 on a highway or 160 when going through a little town.
- You don’t put on your lights until it’s pitch dark. Once you do put them on, you put them on their brightest. No use having lights if you can’t blind other people with them.
- Survival of the fittest: bigger cars have right of way.
- If there is a bend in the road with 2 lanes, you will use both lanes and keep switching between them, thus preventing people to pass (and thereby causing even more go slow)
- Should there be an interesting person of the opposite sex in a car nearby you can start flirting, in which case it’s permitted to forget about the rest of traffic.
- If you want to cross a very busy junction, you move slowly but steadily ahead so as to block the road. If a deadlock doesn’t occur, you can pass. Alternatively, you will end up spending many minutes using your claxon and shouting at other people to move.
- If rain falls, you forget how to drive altogether.
Some people say Nigeria is a dangerous country. They say that you’ll be lucky to get away unscathed by kidnappers or armed robbers, without falling victim to malaria, or without hypertension complaints due to overall chaos and corruption. When people hear I live in Nigeria the common question to ask is “isn’t that very dangerous?!”. Nobody wants to come to Nigeria out of fear, while people get crushed in a stampede towards South-Africa –a country far more dangerous than Nigeria. Still, when I think of the way Nigerians drive, my confidence about the safety of the country does falter a bit…
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