[size=14pt]LAGOS: Thy name is lawless[/size]
It is a jungle here


Of all the megacities in the world, Lagos has an unenviable record of being the most lawless, perhaps. New Delhi has its slums but India’s capital is also famous for its orderly traffic. Rio de Janeiro has its frightening favelas but there are no street urchins or area boys intimidating motorists and commuters. Mexico City has its murderous drug cartels but their military personnel don’t drive against traffic. Buenos Aires has its teenage terror gangs but no commercial motorcyclists (okada riders) notching up the confusion level in Argentina’s coastal capital. It is only in Lagos you’ll find an appalling combination of all these, including randomly breaking laws on a daily basis, ranging from traffic offences to environmental infractions and general disorderly behaviour. Lawless Lagos, as Saturday Sun investigations show, oftentimes end with tragic results for residents and non-residents alike… SAM ANOKAM reports.
Saturday, November 26, 2011

• PHOTOS: THE SUN PUBLISHING
Living index

On Tuesday, November 22, 2011, along Lagos/ Badagry Expressway between Ile Epo Bus stop and Under Bridge near International Trade Fair Complex, the normally paraplegic traffic on both sides of the route had ground to a halt. It was a little before 6pm. In the middle of the road on the right side on the way to Ojo Barracks was an articulated lorry, its windscreen smashed, the doors ajar. Loaded with flat metal sheets, there was, however, an oddity on the vehicle itself.

Lying on the metal sheets was the headless body of a pregnant woman, her liver and other barely recognizable organs spilling out of her crushed midriff. Around the vehicle and stretching on and on along the express, hundreds of onlookers stood in various stages of shock and grief; shock and grief at what some of them considered the needless slaughter of the woman.

Somewhere in the middle of the crowd her husband stood, knelt, bowed and prostrated, a perfect picture of grief and despair, both hands on his head and wailing: “God, why me? What have I done to deserve this? Why, why oh why? Why did you do this to me? I am finished. What will I tell people in the village?”
It happened that the man had gone to pick his wife from Ojota motor park hours before. The woman in question was coming to Lagos for the first time. Four months pregnant with her first baby, she had hoped to live with her husband until she was due for childbirth, after which she would go back to her village in the East. It never happened. She ended up as another victim of the lawlessness that has characterised the city od Lagos.

Eyewitness accounts said she was atop a motorbike (okada) while the husband was astride another one behind. There is a law in the state forbidding pregnant women from doing so. The same law forbids motorbikes from plying that stetch of the road – from Orile to Badagry. Apparently, she didn’t know this, being a first timer in Lagos. But the husband knew, and probably didn’t care.

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/special-%20reports/2011/dec/17/special-reports-12-17-2011-001.html