Diary of a harassed Lagosian (II)

That day I woke up abruptly from a nightmarish sleep feeling lost and hopeless. For a brief moment, I could not figure out where I was, but I remembered returning home on Thursday night feeling depressed, my sense of patriotism deflated after watching our fumbling Super Eagles beaten by Ghana at the semi-finals of 2010 African Nations Cup in Angola.

I sat on the edge of the bed trying to get used to the darkness that enveloped me. I groped around the bed in search of my Taiwan made torch that I had bought from the ‘aboki' (Hausa man) who has converted our house security post into a mini mart, selling sundry wares from kola nut to Rizzla foil papers for wrapping Indian hemp.

He is not alone. Illegal immigrants, taking advantage of ECOWAS free movement have flooded Lagos from neighbouring African countries, putting pressures on infrastructures. They are in your face, and have invaded Lagos like a million buzzing bees; riding okadas (commercial motorbikes), pushing carts, selling fruits and moving around with the tools of their trade-jiggers, knives and local barbing tools.

They are your roving local pedicure and manicure experts shaving hairs and hacking crudely away at nails at bus stations and street corners, spreading deadly diseases including HIV/AIDS with unsterilised objects. They are also your ubiquitous and itinerant cobblers. At bus stations across this mega city, they thrust local aphrodisiacs made of herbs, tree barks and roots in disused plastic bottles in your face, telling you to increase your segxwal prowess. Without a home, they bathe and urinate in the open, making nonsense of Lagos beautification project. At night, they lay spread out on their motorbikes till daylight. Lagos is bursting at the seams.

In my room, I groped around in the dark for several unsuccessful seconds. Now the darkness seems to increase. Then I began to feel the heat. Indeed the heat had been responsible for my sudden bout of insomnia this few days. Sweat beads formed on my brow as I felt heat rashes around my neck and back. We have not had electricity on my street in the last one week. The ageing transformer had packed up again. There was a time it blew up and we had to stay without electricity for three months. Needless to say that I have currently relocated to a cybercafé, for all my literary enterprise.

This time the overloaded transformer had protested the neglect by Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) with a loud earth-shattering explosion throwing the whole neighbourhood into darkness. Isn't the reason for my despondency becoming clearer? The Landlords Association on my street has been up to the task. For the umpteenth time, I had gone with them in protest to our District PHCN to complain about the need to change the old transformer.

I was particularly loud this time as we marched to the Area Manager's office. I harped on the need to replace the transformer because come to think of it, aren't we paying the bills? But the man just shrugged. Looking past me, as if addressing a phantom, he insisted that PHCN does not have transformer in stock. Could you people please get together to contribute money to replace your transformer? End of matter.

This is what happens in Lagos where every household and neighbourhood is a republic and a government, providing their water, security and transformers. Now it is either we produce N500, 000 for a new transformer and installation cost or we remain in the Stone Age. Yet, bills kept piling up for lights we did not consume.

I stood up to feel my way around the room. Then I remembered that my mobile phone has a torch I could improvise to find my way around in the darkness. I cast my mind back to three days earlier when I had also tried unsuccessfully to look for fuel to power my Chinese Technology "I better pass my neighbour" Tiger generator.

When I eventually bought five litres measured at N200 per litre, I discovered that the black marketer had wickedly diluted the petrol with kerosene and engine oil. Now my generator, a prized possession and my only link to civilization has packed up, doing fits and starts the last time I tried to power it.

My despondency increased with the reality that I have now been fully castrated and grounded from my incurable habits of following TV breaking news and watching the theatre of the absurd unfolding in Abuja. My misery also doubled when I watched the Nigeria-Ghana match in a Lagos bar filled with noisy, smoking and beer guzzling fans. I didn't have a choice.

I love football. But watching it with Lagos football fanatics in a run-down, rowdy bar is not my idea of spectatorship. Lagosians simply go soccer crazy when matches involving their team are ongoing. The other day when we defeated Mozambique, beer flowed freely as one crazy fan threw the bar open and I drank to a tipsy state.

On Thursday, the breweries seem to have stopped brewing. Nigeria was losing and the bar proprietor looked sad as if bereaved. She eyed me disgustingly and I quickly bought a bottle of Star Lager which I nursed throughout the whole disappointing and drab match. In Lagos bars, during football matches, a bottle of Lager is your ticket for entry in the face of PHCN inefficiency.

Back in my room as I sat staring into space, I remembered I had felt sad because we lost to Ghana.

But the reason for my despondency was much more. My misery deepened with the possibility of an indefinite darkness occasioned by the faulty transformer, my faulty generator, and my landlord's insistence that we must pay unconsumed PHCN bills. I do not intend to argue with him though because the threat of a quit notice from an imperial Lagos landlord like mine will be too hard too bear.