At about 3pm, the last passenger paid for her travel ticket and the car was set for departure right after the driver settled some guys at the park and reconciled the manifest. There were seven passengers in total, out of which only two were females. The car departed its Aba road terminal in Port Harcourt at about 3ː30pm. It came as a great relief for Brandon who for a moment thought that he will get disappointed and not get to travel that day, which will ultimately translate to cancellation of his national youth service that year.
But before they sped off into a never ending length of roads, they made a brief stop at the petrol station to fill the car tank. The prices of things have really skyrocketed since the last time Brandon went on a long distance journey as this. Petrol prices have soared from around the region of 95naira/liter to about 170naira/liter. This has affected the prices of everything from food to transportation.
The driver bought ten-thousand-naira worth of petrol and Brandon began to make some calculations in his mind how the driver would make profit from this kind of journey after spending that much on petrol alone. The transport industry is one that interests Brandon as he had plans of starting his very own transport company when he is done with service and has saved enough money.
In the meantime, he watched as the pump attendant typed in the amount in the pumping machine. Some petrol marketing companies have been known to tactfully sell lesser quantity of petrol than the amount paid for. They do this by adjusting the pump calibration. Brandon quietly watched and observed that this could be one of those companies that were being talked about by the dissatisfactory expression on the driver’s face. However, the driver didn’t mutter a word; he simply opened the door of the car, went inside and drove off.
They encountered a few traffic jams within the city but they soon got on a freeway outside the city. The sun will soon set and there is still a lot of ground to cover if they want to make it to Abuja before midnight. Scary tales have been told about how dangerous night travels could be on Nigerian roads.
Recently, he heard a market woman narrate her ordeal and escape from the hands of highway robbers and kidnappers. She was on her way back from Lagos where she had gone to buy some goods and these “evil men”, as she called the robbers, waylaid the bus she was in and took peoples’ valuables away. The woman said they took the box full of shoes and all the money she had left. While she narrated her story, Brandon began to imagine how horrifying it must have been for her, he pitied the woman. He thought how it was possible for anyone to hurt such an innocent, hardworking and cheerful woman as Mrs. Udoh. The incident was widely publicized in the media. Hence it was on the backdrop of this and many other similar incidences that many of Brandon’s acquaintances had advised him against travelling at night on the road.
As the night sky began to make its presence felt, Brandon began to feel a little agitated but just then he remembered the prayers of his mom. “I refuse to fear, nothing bad will happen to us, we will arrive safely at our destination and on time”, he muttered quietly trying to avoid causing a panic amongst the passengers.
The roads are getting darker as they drove into the night. Brandon is beginning to feel uneasy as his bladder needs to be emptied; he would be so glad if the next stop happens quickly. Hopefully, there would be a restaurant close by for him to eat after releasing himself. The only food left in his stomach is the snacks he had ate during the day and for a foodie like him it’s a great achievement to have not eaten for that long. His mother would be proud of this feat, and at this thought, he smiled. Oh how he misses his family, friends and loved ones back home already.
He snapped back to reality at the sound of his phone, it was his mother calling. They spoke for three minutes, and he got back to his thoughts. The journey has been somewhat boring; nobody seems to be talking for long but for a few comments here and there. He had imagined it this way, by looking at the faces of his fellow passengers, he saw that most of them are shy people and he wasn’t too different from them in that aspect.
To ease the boredom, the driver turned on the stereo and some melodious tunes began to pump out of the speakers. Brandon sang and moved his body to the rhythm of the songs. He finds music very relaxing. There have been countless times when music has abruptly changed his mood.
The driver made a brief stop to check the cause of a funny sound from the car. He fixed it up and they were on their way once again. They are about three hours into the journey and the night clouds have fully taken over and Brandon noticed that the night was unusually dark; there was no moon or stars either. The more they drove into the night, the lonelier it got for them as very few cars were on the same route as they were.
Earlier, at the bus terminal, Brandon overheard a conversation between the driver and another driver on a better and faster route to take for the journey. “I no really sabi that road” said Brandon’s driver.
In the meantime, Brandon observed that his driver has opted to go through the route the other driver had advised on. However, when they got to a T-junction in a town, the driver got confused on which turn to take. So he stopped a car and enquired from the driver. Fortunately, the other driver of a heavily loaded car was on the way to Abuja as well. It came as relieve to everyone in the car, especially for Brandon who cannot afford another delay and to be lost in such a place at this time of the night won’t be palatable in all ramifications.
In the meantime, they are just going to follow closely behind their ‘GPRS’ if they want to arrive at their destination on time. Consequentially, they stopped at every point the other car stopped and waited for the driver to finish his business. Brandon and the other passengers took these times to stretch their bodies and look around the place they are or get something to eat and drink.
On this journey Brandon has already sampled some new foods such as plantain and groundnut, banga soup and starch at brief stopovers. At around 11pm when they drove into a border town in Edo state, there were only a handful of cars on the road now however it got even lonelier as they took a bend into a narrow road with thick vegetation on both sides. At this point only the two cars were on an extensive stretch of tarred road. Many frightening thoughts filled Brandon’s mind and he believed he wasn’t the only frightened person in the car. Who wouldn’t be afraid with the current state of security in the country? The presence of uniformed men on the road didn’t exacerbate his fears; it actually heightened it all the more. There have been several reports around the country on how armed robbers, kidnappers and terrorists like the boko haram disguise in military uniforms to harm their unsuspecting victims.
As they approached the standing uniform men, the driver of the car leading them brought out his hand and gave what appeared to be a fifty naira note to one of the men. And then they waved the two cars on. The man did the same thing at the next six checkpoints they encountered.
When they got to Lokoja, the capital city of Kogi state, it was now the early hours of the morning but it seemed as though people there don’t sleep at nights as people were seen everywhere going on with their businesses like it was daytime. The road was terribly bad and it took the mastery of driving for his driver to successfully navigate the road which had heavy duty trucks carelessly packed on both sides.
Brandon has been awake all through the journey and he is beginning to feel sleepy now. Meanwhile some of the other passengers are already snoring away in oblivion. Brandon closed his eyes but he couldn’t sleep, he had to stay alert and experience this journey. It isn’t in his habit to sleep on journeys because he believes that journeys are to be experienced and one can’t achieve do that while asleep. They are now a few minutes away from Abuja and although it was still dark he wants to behold its beauty once again.
If things had gone as he planned; he would have been in Abuja the previous day and subsequently spend some time there, just to explore the city. He made that arrangement with a friend who lived in Abuja city and was ready to show him around the city, but it wasn’t going to be this time around. His focus now is to get to the campsite on time and safely.