By Priscilla Iyabo Awojuola
There are journeys we plan.
And there are journeys that happen to us.
In Nigeria, increasingly, the journey itself has become a story.
You leave home early because you have somewhere important to be. You calculate the distance, the fare, the weather, and the time. You say a little prayer and set out.
Then the road happens.
A journey that should take 30 minutes takes two hours. Two hours becomes four. Sometimes, nobody can tell you exactly when you will arrive.
You are not travelling anymore.
You are waiting.
The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway gave Nigerians another painful reminder of this reality in September when repairs around Kara Bridge, combined with accidents and truck incidents, produced severe gridlock. Some commuters were stranded for hours, some trekked long distances, while others reportedly spent the night on the road.
It was not simply a traffic story.
It was a story about time.
About productivity.
About family.
About health.
About the Nigerian who leaves home before sunrise and returns when the children are already asleep.
And perhaps most importantly, it was a story about how we are gradually becoming accustomed to losing pieces of our lives on the road.
WHAT HAPPENS TO TIME?
Time is the one currency nobody can refund.
When a trader spends four hours trapped in traffic, that is four hours that could have been spent selling.
When a doctor arrives late because the road has failed, somebody may wait longer for attention.
When a teacher spends hours commuting, that fatigue follows her into the classroom.
When a parent gets home late every evening, the child grows up with less of that parent’s time.
When a young entrepreneur spends a substantial part of the day moving between suppliers, customers, and traffic, the cost is not merely fuel.
It is an opportunity.
Research by the Danne Institute for Research previously estimated that Lagos commuters spent an average of 2.21 hours daily in traffic while commuting to work, with additional transport and fuel costs also imposed on households.
More recent reporting in 2026 has similarly highlighted the extraordinary time burden faced by Lagos commuters.
But there is something statistics can not measure easily.
What does it cost a mother to miss bedtime with her child for the hundredth time?
What does it cost a business when a customer gives up because delivery has been delayed?
What does it cost a society when tired people arrive at their destinations already exhausted?
THE ROAD DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE
The road is one of the few places where Nigeria’s social classes meet.
The executive sits in an air-conditioned car.
The civil servant squeezes into a bus.
The trader carries goods.
The student stands at a crowded bus stop.
The motorcycle rider searches for a gap.
The truck driver fights exhaustion.
But when the road stops, everybody waits.
For a moment, the distinctions disappear.
We are all commuters.
We are all asking the same question:
“When will this traffic move?”
And perhaps that is why the road tells us so much about ourselves.
We see impatience.
We see desperation.
We see kindness.
We see indiscipline.
We see people driving against traffic because they can not bear to wait.
We see others blocking the road while trying to make a quick turn.
We see commercial drivers struggling to survive.
We see traffic officials trying to impose order on chaos.
We see the consequences of poor planning, inadequate infrastructure, accidents, overloaded corridors, and human indiscipline all converging in one place.
The road becomes a mirror.
And sometimes, we do not like what it reflects.
SANGO-OTA KNOWS THIS STORY TOO WELL
For residents and businesses around Sango-Ota, the story is painfully familiar.
The Lagos-Abeokuta corridor has faced prolonged rehabilitation, with road users and traders raising concerns about the pace of work and its effect on movement and commercial activity.
But beyond the construction equipment and traffic diversions are people.
The trader whose customers stop coming because reaching her shop has become too difficult.
The worker who must leave home ridiculously early.
The transport operator whose fuel consumption rises because of constant delays.
The resident who has learnt to calculate every journey not in kilometres, but in hours.
This is what infrastructure failure looks like when it enters ordinary life.
It does not always arrive with a dramatic headline.
Sometimes, it is simply a mother standing by the roadside at 6:30 in the morning, wondering whether the bus will come.
AND THEN WE BECOME USED TO IT
Perhaps this is the most disturbing part.
We adapt.
We wake earlier.
We leave work earlier.
We carry snacks.
We charge our phones.
We tell people, “I am on my way,” even when we have barely moved.
We learn alternative routes.
We save emergency money for transport.
We develop the patience of people who know they have no choice.
And, eventually, abnormality becomes normal.
That is how societies change.
Not always through one dramatic event.
Sometimes, through repeated inconvenience that people eventually stop questioning.
A three-hour journey becomes “normal.”
A road that takes years to complete becomes “normal.”
A commuter spending half the day travelling becomes “normal.”
A child seeing less of a parent because of traffic becomes “normal.”
But it should not be.
THE ROAD IS MORE THAN ASPHALT
Roads are not merely infrastructure.
They are arteries of an economy.
They connect workers to jobs, farmers to markets, patients to hospitals, children to schools, and businesses to customers.
When movement fails, everything else begins to slow down.
That is why road construction should never be viewed simply as a government project.
It is an investment in people’s time.
It is an investment in productivity.
It is an investment in family life.
It is an investment in dignity.
And yes, rehabilitation will sometimes create temporary hardship. The Federal Government explained that the Kara Bridge repairs were necessary because deteriorating expansion joints had exceeded their service life and posed safety concerns.
The point, therefore, is not that roads should never be repaired.
They must be repaired.
The question is whether we can build, repair, and maintain infrastructure in ways that recognise the enormous human cost of disruption.
Because behind every vehicle trapped in traffic is somebody going somewhere.
Somebody is late for work.
Somebody is carrying food home.
Somebody is going to the hospital.
Somebody is trying to make a living.
Somebody is trying to get home before dark.
Somebody is simply trying to get home.
And perhaps that is why the road is telling our story.
It tells us how we plan.
How we build.
How we maintain.
How we obey.
How we cooperate.
How we respond when systems fail.
But it also tells us something more profound.
A society that continually wastes the time of its people is wasting a part of its future.
We should, therefore, stop asking only:
“How bad is the traffic today?”
Perhaps the better question is:
“What kind of society are we building when getting from one place to another consumes so much of our lives?”
The road is speaking.
Perhaps it is time we listened.
