In the course of the jolly, cool test ride, Head of Corporate Communication of Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), Mr. Kolawole Ojelabi, spoke on the operation of the scheme. According to him, the Red Line shares the same tracks with the Nigeria Railway Corporation’s inter state service. This means having to maintain agreements and arrangements with NRC management to reconcile its schedules with that of the Federal Government-run tracks. It is after sorting such that the dry runs commenced.
The rolling stocks (trains or railway vehicles) are in place already while more are expected from China after Sanwo-Olu’s business trip to that country earlier in the year. The more beautiful development is that, days ago, the governor, who was again in China on the entourage of President Bola Tinubu, consolidated the deal that will birth the Green Line.
There are eight stations along the Red Line corridor. These are Agbado (a border town between Ogun and Lagos States), Iju, Agege, Ikeja, Oshodi, Mushin, and Yaba. It eventually terminates at Oyingbo. He further recalled that the Sanwo-Olu administration had opened five bridges in Yaba, Oyingbo, Ikeja, Agege and Mushin along the 37km Red Line corridor to create new links along the Lagos Rail Mass Transit from Agbado to Oyingbo. However, the more he mentioned more iconic names of places in the area, the more my past life around Iyana Ipaja-Agbado axis kept luring me onto her bosom. So, welcome again into my world.
After staying for about six irredeemable years in Iyana Ipaja, I moved to Ijaye Ojokoro, an area not far from Alagbado, where fuji legend, Kollington Ayinla, lives and popularised in some of his songs. I remember him singing in one of his albums:
Kọ̀làwọlé ò kú o, ayé ilé
B’ẹ bá dé Alágbàdo,
Ẹ ó ri p’ó ń j’ayé ọba…
This means: ‘Kolawole is alive/If you get to Alagbado/You will meet him living like a king”.
The contingent on the Red Line train, who were/are also largely old-school, in a banter affirmed that the artiste was synonymous with Alagbado, while also recalling that Afro Juju superstar, Shina Peters, has his White House in the Iju area, not far from the rail line.
I remembered that my apartment in Ijaiye Ojokoro was a room and a parlour ‘self-contain’. I think I was paying some N50,000 per annum. Since I was still a bloody bachelor, that was not too bad for me, though since I had by then become an entrenched Lagosian, I had started having girlfriends. That was even before I left Iyana Ipaja, though I was more married to literature and journalism. I was bee-busy building my poetry performance life especially. But, since God is reading whatever I am writing here, I dare not deny that I had one babe or the other, at least at different times. There were young ladies even in our face-me-I-face-you house in Iyana Ipaja, including my landlady’s granddaughter, Seri; and her elder cousin, Kadijat. They liked me and I didn’t hate them. Maybe that is what life is about: mutual liking. But, perhaps based on my rural upbringing, I was somehow shy and too cautious to befriend or sustain a move towards dating them. Yet, there were one or two close shaves with intimacy.
Yet, it was in Iyana Ipaja I first related well with some three marriageable ladies, with the hope that something good could work out. While one was an old classmate at the Oyo (now Osun) State College of Education, Ila-Orangun, the second was a sister-in-law to a colleague at Providence Heights School, Iju-Agege. The one I, however, like to vividly recall is Lolade, whom I met in Ibadan. We met in last house I lived in Oluyoro, Ibadan, together with a friend and brother, Abdul Hamzat, before I left the Oyo State capital for Lagos. Lolade was a relative of an elderly co-tenant, Mrs. Egbedokun, who, as well as their entire family, was very accommodating. From day one, I regarded Lolade a marriage candidate. A solid wife material. Homely, beautiful, intelligent and lovely. She liked me as much as I did her. She was a student at Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, when we met. She visited me a couple of times in Iyana Ipaja and she never hanged me for not being able to afford more. She joined me to share the one toilet the battalion in the house shared. Indeed, she took me to her mum in Ile-Ife and she accepted me without any condition. But marriage between Lolade and I was never to be because, I guess, she eventually didn’t see me as someone ready to settle down any time too soon. Although she handled the matter of our separation in a rather uninspiring way, I actually reasoned with her even if retrospectively.
After completing her programme at Adeyemi, Lolade would not communicate with me again. That was around 1996, pre-GSM era when we couldn’t speak via phones. She used to visit regularly, or write. At that time, I too didn’t really make any meaningful move to look for her. I think I was partly angry and partly busy. One day, after about six months into her National Youth Service, I received a protest yet apologetic letter from Lolade, apologising for switching off, especially at that time she had just completed schooling. According to her, she had observed that I was not doing anything that suggested I would marry as soon as she would want. She cited the example of my not having bought a TV set and, I think, one or two other issues. What I believe, however, really put her off was the type of business I launched into after quitting teaching at Victory Grammar School, Ikeja.
A colleague of mine at the school, Bade Adeluyi, and I had decided to leave the classroom and open a meat (beef) shop/mini abattoir as the first step to joining the food industry. (I hinted at this in the first part of this narration). When I discussed this with Lolade the last time she visited, she only struggled to understand. I gathered that she could not cope with the picture of herself as wife of an eleran, or alapata, the Yoruba word for a butcher. Perhaps she thought that because I am from Ibadan, I seemed to be sliding into a trade the city is regularly mocked by. Some mischievous folks would say, Eran ni’Badan ta: butchery is the first love of Ibadan people. Is the perception right or wrong? A different story for another day. For while many unschooled Ibadan men are truly alapata, the same city has produced many highly educated great people who have triumphed in different areas of life.
Fortunately or unfortunately for Lolade and I, I too wasn’t too keen about marriage then, even if not about her. It was the reason I couldn’t get her sat down and elaborate on the vision my partner and I had. I didn’t bother to tell her that even as of the last time she was with me, Cadbury had already given us a supply, that we should supply beef to its kitchen in its Agidingbi, Ikeja office — which was the kind of level we saw ourselves operating in the nearest future then. Anyway, I never replied Lolade’s letter, let alone look for her for further exploration. How could I have done so when I even never got married until some 10 years after her departure?
How is she now? I hope she is doing well with her family. But, honestly, our paths have never crossed again since that 1995. A very good woman she must have become based on the potential she radiated.
So, as Sanwo-Olu’s train cruised past the Iyana Ipaja/Iju Agege/ Abule Egba areas, heading for Agbado, the Lolades and other related matters were parts of those riding through the rail of my mind.
In spite of the barricade the government has put in place at different points in the Red Line/NRC corridor, some recalcitrant people still found their way too close to the moving train. Indeed, the situation at the Agbado Crossing, which is the final destination, proved more stubborn. Because many residents of the area were used to seeing trains around — since the Federal Government’s own regularly plied the lane, they did not accord the roaring vehicle the kind of respect and fear it deserves. Some were seen crossing carelessly, a syndrome that government has to drastically address to avert tragedy. Ojelabi assured that LAMATA and the NRC were already working on sanitising the environment.
Then he spoke on timing: “Currently, we (the Red Line) are doing 25 kilometres per hour. That is the speed the NRC gave us. That will take us one hour, seven minutes to get to Agbado from Oyingbo. But we are working in such a way that we should be able to do it in less than 45 minutes. This is in the sense that you can reduce the waiting time at each station and gain some 10 minutes. We can also increase the speed maybe by another 10 minutes. But, ultimately, we can do more because this train is high-speed. It can do 225 miles per hour. But because it’s an intra-city train, it cannot really shoot like that, and it also has to stop at different stations. Most importantly, we will increase the speed when we are ready to fully start operation”.
Ojelabi added that the Blue Line that used to do 30 minutes had got it reduced to 18 minutes. “We were doing 54 trips per day, we have increased it to 72 trips per day. So, if you are going from Marina to Mile 2, in 18 minutes you complete your journey. So, you can plan well. Our vision is that when the trip extends from Marina to Okokomaiko, we should be able to round up the journey in about 30 minutes”, he explained.
To be continued
