This looks like beef, and smells like beef, but don’t be fooled, it is actually beef.
Lagos Island is overrated abeg.
One word that best describes Lagos Island is ‘pretentious’. Lagos Island tries to come across as sane, as the upgraded Lagos. It tries to pass off as the “livable” part of Lagos. They even went and painted their danfos green and white. Green and white! Danfo that’s not yellow and black is that one danfo? Imagine a painting of traffic in a busy city street that’s full of white and green taxis and the artist captions it “WELCOME TO LAGOS.” Which Lagos? Abomination!
Lagos Islanders carry a certain air of better pass when they talk about where they live. A typical Island person wastes no opportunity to show they are better off. You hear things like “unlike in the mainland” and “I can never live in that Mainland.”
In their minds, Lagos Mainland is representative of poor, regular and washed up. The way they talk, you would think they don’t have the same go-slow. You would think potholes no dey dem road. You would think their patriotic green, white, green buses don’t have agberos threatening to yank off side mirrors or smash windows. You would think they don’t use generators too. Lagos Island that somebody will accidentally spill water on the road and the next thing, the whole street is flooded! Glorified packaging wey dem no even pack well sef.
I remember one time I stayed in Lagos Island, around Lekki. I was working on a writing project that kept me there for a month. When it rained, anybody living in a room that’s not in the second floor would arm themselves with buckets and mops and brooms and dustpans and boots and a canoe and paddle.
E remain to buy fishing rod. Why go fishing all the way in the river when the river can come to you? When you can just sit in your favourite chair, watching Big Brother Nigeria while catching cat fish, right in your living room.
Better pass indeed.
Lagos, the real Lagos, is in the Mainland. Lagos island is simply Abuja that doesn’t know how to be Abuja. Lagos Island is that friend who went to ordinary Cotonou and came back with tales of Burger king and was even speaking with American accent for us.
If you want to form tush, go to Lagos Island. If you want to keep it real, Lagos Mainland is there. Everything that Lagos is – the spirit, the sounds, the sights, the people, it is all on the Mainland.
Don’t let anyone fool you that Lagos Island is the real deal. Lagos is Lagos no matter how much you package it as some modern symbol of progress and organization. Lagos is Lagos. Lagos is disorganized chaos. Lagos is transferred aggression. Lagos is trees growing branches. Ideas turning into cash.
Lagos is sun-darkened, science student agberos chasing after YELLOW AND BLACK danfos, money and menace on their minds. Lagos is mayhem and madness. Nothing else.
thisislagos!