Ime Akpan
On Sunday, November 21, 2021, I journeyed from Uyo to Lagos in a bus with registration number UWN 5727T operated by Peace Mass Transit, hereinafter referred to as PMT.
I booked for the trip on Saturday, November 20 and arrived at the company’s office in Ekid Itam as early as 6.45am the next day, collected my ticket and waited in the departure hall.
By 7.30 which was the departure time, there was no sign that all was well, which prompted me to approach the station manager to find out what was going on. He assured that “we will soon leave.”
As I waited patiently, I moved closer to the counter and eavesdropped on the conversation going on between two staff.
“We have not got any driver to go to Lagos. The station manager has been making calls since 6am to no avail. I pray we don’t have to make refund, the second time in one week. That will be too bad for our image,” one of them said in Ibibio language.
Having heard that, I feared that the trip might be botched. The conversation reminded me of what a scruffy fellow told me after leaving the PMT terminal on Saturday.
The young man had, before I booked for the trip, entreated me to patronise his company but his appearance put me off. I really wanted to travel with a bus company that has identity. And that was PMT after I missed God is Good Motors (GIGM) as a result of late booking. After leaving PMT, the young man met me again as I was about to board a bus and said: “If you travel tomorrow (Sunday), thank your God. I pray that you are not told there is no vehicle and your money refunded or if there is one, you don’t leave late.” He vanished thereafter like Philip the Evangelist after he had baptised an Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8.
At 8.15am, I heaved a sigh of relief when a sturdy young man called out Lagos-bound passengers to bring their luggage. “At least there is a bus to take me to Lagos. The ‘prophecy’ of the young man is half correct,” I told myself.
He began to load the vehicle. Unlike the other smart transport firms like ABC Transport, GIGM, the 14-seater bus was so filled with luggage that there was no room to swing a cat. There was no difference, in terms of spacing, between the luggage packed into UWN 5727T and the ones loaded on bolekaja ferrying farm produce from Ondo to Lagos or the lorry transporting tomatoes and other farm produce from the north to Lagos. The narrow space on the gangway was filled with luggage to the extent that passengers in the back seats practically had to jump or step on gargantuan Ghana-Must-Go bags before they could get off the vehicle each time they wanted to.
The back of the driver’s seat had a heavy sack tied to it such that the occupant of the third seat could hardly stretch his legs. The second front seat also had a heavy bag strapped to the back which subjected the occupant of the fifth seat to the same condition of the third man. Passengers on seats seven and eight were sandwiched by a sack that served as their armrest. The two gentlemen had the onerous task of dragging the bag down before the back seat passengers could get off. In the cause of the journey, a jumbo paint container tumbled and spilled its content.
We finally took off at 8.44am. Before that time, all the other long haul buses operating from Uyo to Abuja, Kaduna, Ibadan, Akure, Kano, etc had left. Did I travel on PMT bus? Yes. Did the bus leave early? NO. The ‘prediction of my grubby ‘friend’ came to pass.
The driver stopped over at the Aba office of the company to carry out minor repairs on the vehicle. What was the problem? I learnt it had to do with the axle.
I watched as the in-house mechanic – he would rather prefer to be addressed as engineer for according to him he’s not operating from the roadside – battled to pour oil into the axle. Some of the passengers who have some knowledge of driving or might have had a similar experience helped to salvage the situation. We spent an hour at the Aba office.
We set out again, traversing the bad roads and sometimes getting stuck in gullies in oriental states of Abia, Imo and Anambra and got to Onitsha by 4pm. Meanwhile, we had lost almost three hours between Uyo and Aba.
Before I booked on Saturday, I informed the station manager that my destination was on the Apapa-Oshodi 2 axis of Lagos knowing that PMT operates to Orile along Badagry Expressway. He assured that the bus stops and discharges Lagos passengers at Berger and Cele bus stops respectively before a final stop at its terminal.
But guess what, the bus also had passengers going to Ibadan and Ajah. I got to know that in the evening when we stopped over in Benin. By that time, the station manager who had accompanied us from Uyo had disappeared. When would the bus arrive in Ibadan to discharge the passengers and move from there to Ajah and then to Orile axis? I wondered as the three locations are not contiguous.
The most anxious moment came when we got to Ijebu-Ode where the driver pulled up at an all-purpose filling station at Epe junction and asked everyone to disembark. Time was 10.30pm.
He told us the oil in the axle was leaking and he could not continue on the journey.
Meanwhile, there were two sienna buses loading passengers to Ajah. He approached one of the drivers but ran back to us and complained about the cost of paying a ‘connecting flight’ for each of about six passengers, beside two children.
He said paying so much to ferry the passengers to Ajah would eat deeply into his allowance.
He was able to convince the two men going to Ibadan with a token.
Turning to those of us going to Lagos, he brought out miserable-looking N3000 and began sharing it for us.
I told him to keep the money when it was my turn.
Me: My contract with your organisation terminates somewhere in Lagos and not at Epe junction.
Driver: Just take the money; you will spend say N700 to Lagos.
Me: My interest is not in the N300 ‘profit’, but my safety, my life that you have endangered. I don’t know this place and even if I collect the money how do I get a vehicle going to Lagos at this inauspicious hour?
Driver: These guys –referring to the touts operating at the filling station- will stop a vehicle for you.
Me: Which guys, do I know them? Do you really consider my safety when you trust my life to these urchins who cannot be traced?
Driver: Oga, please collect this money or you wait until any of our vehicles pulls up then you continue with the bus to Lagos?
Me: Look at the time. How many of your buses are still operating by this time of the night? Or are you expecting one; are you in communication with any?
He was tongue-tied. He left and came back later for further negotiation.
Driver: I’m going to manage the vehicle to Ajah because those going that way are many.
Me: And what happens to me?
Driver: I will wait a little and if I see any vehicle going to Lagos I will put the three of you.
The clock was ticking and there I was standing between the devil and the deep blue sea and lost in the middle of nowhere.
While still waiting, I asked myself: “Should I stay with the devil – the unknown boys at the petrol station – or jump on any bus going to Lagos – deep blue sea – and pray that the ‘whale’ will expel me from its bowel along Oshodi-Apapa Expressway where I can find my way home, no matter the time of the night? Something within me told me that it was better to take a plunge into the deep blue sea.
Almost immediately, an 18-seater bus with no traceable identity stopped over at the filling station to discharge some passengers coming from God-knows-where. At that point, I was like someone who had dysentery and must not select toilet except they want to pooh-pooh in their pants. I jumped on board and called the other two passengers to follow suit. They obliged.
The bus trudged on and stopped over at Ase-Ase in Ogun State for one of the passengers to alight. There, the driver announced that the next stop would be Berger and finally its station at Maza-Maza. I pleaded with him to stop for me somewhere along Oshodi-Apapa Expressway and after the IGG (initial gra-gra) he obliged.
Now, the driver dressed like one of those Lagos bus drivers plying Oshodi-Mushin-Ojuelegba-Ijora Olopa-Eko-Iddo-Idumota route. He wore only a sleeveless of indefinable colour; a pair of ankara trousers that used to be clean and a pair of sandals that were once very new. And he disturbed the peace of the passengers with loud Igbo highlife music. As a fugitive at his mercy, I could not complain about his faux pas so he might not be infuriated and ask me to ‘comot for my bus weda you pay or you no pay.’
I was afraid as I got off at Cele Bus Stop. Everywhere was dark and quiet. The only commercial motor-cyclist who grudgingly agreed to take me to a street close to mine doubled the fare. I walked on the dark lonely street, looking over my shoulder and suspecting even stray kids ferreting around. I got home at 12.03am on Tuesday.
As I lay down, very tired, I reflected on the whole saga. “PMT had conned me,” I muttered. I recalled that throughout the journey, the driver did not turn on the air conditioner whereas the ticketing officer at Ekid Itam collected N10000 for ‘AC bus.’ Why didn’t I tell the driver to turn on the AC even when the poorly ventilated vehicle was hot and caused so much discomfort to us? Was everyone in the bus under a powerful spell such that they could not raise a finger? I don’t know. But I thank God I got home safely.
Bye-bye PMT, untill I don’t come your way again!
