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One of the risks of
taking the bus at night is that you are more likely to enter the
devil’s danfo, otherwise known as One Chance. It uses the best line in
public transport advertising: it is going your way and you are the last
passenger. It is also not the whole truth.

Oh, it is going
your way all right, it is always going your way. But you are the only
passenger: the rest are robbers. Welcome to your worst nightmare.
Prepare to be slapped, stripped and shoved out of a speeding vehicle.
It is a robbery and an accident rolled into one. And it does not have
to be at night either.

The other day, a
young colleague of mine was coming to work when he unluckily took such
a bus. He was, to add to his misfortune, flouting a beautiful new phone
that must have set him back some. As he studied the sundry
applications, three men approached and without further ado began to
pummel him: blows, kicks, and screams were coming at him from
everywhere. Ah, how they worked Ayo (oops) over, and since he is a big
guy, they didn’t take any chances.

There were all
kinds of plasters on his face the next day, but I suspect the loss of
that E72 was the unkindest cut of all. And for that, there is no
bandage.

Yesterday, in the
bus I took to Ojota, a woman was on the phone (not an E72) to her
daughter who said she had just escaped from a One Chance. “Are you OK?”
she kept asking. “Stay there, am coming. No enter any bus. Just stay
there.”

She was quite
agitated, so I gave her my sympathy look, and she gave me the story.
The girl had gone to visit her cousins at Mile 12 but she never got
there. The woman, after calling her cell phone to no avail, had spent
the whole day taking all kinds of buses to all kinds of places in
search of her daughter. She was losing all hope when the girl called
minutes ago – with her own phone.

Journalism is
nothing if not pitiless in its search for truth, so I asked, gently,
“How come the girl didn’t lose her phone?” As Ayo’s case demonstrated,
the phone is usually the first to go. But a mother is nothing if not
defensive.

“You see, na wise
girl. She quick notice the kine people wey dey the bus, so she hide her
phone. After everything, she call me. She is wise.”

No doubt, but I
still wondered. And my next question would not have been wise but
fortunately the driver was then giving his take on the matter. “You go
do thanksgiving o,” he said.

“Yesterday, as I
dey go ‘Yanaoworo for express, the bus for my front na One Chance. I
suspect am because e too slow. So as I wan overtake am, dem just
throway one pregnant woman from inside suddenly for the middle of the
road there. Na God say I no go match am. Remain small.”

“So what happened to her?” I asked.

“Ehn? As I see that woman, she go die. Woman with belle, for that night. No hope.”

I was, as they say, flabbergasted. “You no stop pick am?”

“Pick wetin? You
know the kine people wey dey do One chance? My passengers sef no gree.
Dem say e fit be trap. If we stop, the other bus go fit turn back rob
us. Na speed we take leave the place.”

“Eeewo!,” said the
woman whose child may just have escaped a similar ordeal. She resumed
her call, “Bose, BOSE. No enter bus o. Wait for me …”