Voyage of Discovery
Adedayo Adejobi discovers the Nigerian countryside from the south to the north on a 48-hour road trip with a made-inNigeria Peugeot car
riving across Nigerian cities to the countryside can be an interesting game. But a lot depends on the vehicle and the tripper. Setting out from Lagos at Oluwalogbon Motors’ head office within the precinct of the Lagos business district on a recent Sunday morning, 10 of us had our gaze fixed on Kaduna in northern Nigeria.
It would be a long journey of 904 kilometres. And with tour guides, road safety officials, policemen and an ambulance, there was nothing to fear, except that on such a trip having a map will perhaps make the journey easier, but we had none.
With two persons paired to sit in each car, our experience with Peugeot car ranges- 301, 408,508, 4008 and 5008 began.
At 10a.m. we set to move after we had fuelled the cars for the journey.
Heading towards the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, our only instruction was to “follow the lead car, keep driving in convoy and at 100 kilometer per hour.’’
I muttered to myself, “At that snail speed, we were sure to sleep on the road the whole day,’’ especially leaving the take-off point late.
That was literally what we did until we all realised hours later that we’ll get to Lokoja, the stopping point for the night at an ungodly hour, should we keep up that speed limit and strict drive-test rules. The rule may have been perfect if we had left as earlier scheduled for 7.am, but for delays we experienced.
As we hit the expressway, we soon realised we were in Ibadan, the city at the edge of the savannah and the third largest metropolitan city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, Ife and the hilly rocks of Ondo.
The lush greenery, plains, bush paths, monstrous trees along the driveway were a usual great sight to behold along this path.
The landscape was as stark and dramatic as a brooding expanse of withered shrubs and fat cactuses, the stony roads that seemed to lead nowhere, the bleak, natural and beautiful backdrop that seemed as though no one had laid a hand on it, with lively colorations at a distance and up close so dry.
Some hours into the journey, we all stopped for a recess and enjoyed some fresh air to break away from the air conditioner we had subjected ourselves to on the trip.
By the side, a female colleague with sharp eye caught a glimpse of a huge brown snake, big enough to swallow a human being, as it climbed the sloppy plain amidst thick bush and trees.
I was indeed amazed at the size of such a creature which most probably came to shed its skin. The journey continued with a view to finding a good stop for a good meal.
After a 30-minutes drive, at about 4:30pm, we stopped for our first meal in the hilly town of Owo.
At a time you’ll expect all of us on the journey who were mostly Christians to be observing the Lenten period fasting, but many were desperate to get away from the steering to eat. We finally settled to eat. I settled for a morsel of fufu, vegetable, (efo-riro), fresh fish and ponmo (cow leather) alongside cold bottled water. Hardly were my colleagues aware of what they ate, desperate to get back to the comfort of the air conditioned car, and run from the scorching sun and the heat wave that had temperatures soaring almost 6 degrees above normal.
Hitting the road, we were speeding at 180 kilometres per hour north. In late night rain from Owo to lokoja, the conciliatory waves lapping at the edge of car, disentangling myself from Lagos, struggling from freeway to freeway, I am reminded that much of my life has been spent this way—escaping from cities. I wanted to see the glimmering spaces in the distances that lay between big cities, the road that unrolled before me. Lagos to Kaduna was a simple yet complex set of on-ramps and merging freeways, like a gigantic game of snakes and ladders that propelled us through the body of cities to deliver me us Kaduna.
As we approached our destination for the night, the low bald hills and far-off mountains were looking toasted and forbidding under the darkening sky.
That sky slipped lower, scattered rain that quickly evaporated on the road, and then gouts of marble-size stones swept over the road ahead, like a plague of mothballs. And in that black deluge we had to be extra careful driving, as we were stranger’s on this terrain and at such unfriendly timing.
This was fearsome and satisfying, especially