The Dangerous City of Lagos

_{Photo by Babatunde Olajide}

My family moved to Lagos, one of the busiest and probably the most popular state in Nigeria when I was about three years old. We had moved to a ghetto area that wasn't exactly a ghetto at the time due the fact that there was less buildings and less population at the ghetto back in that year. But as time went on, people moved to that area and it became a full blown ghetto area.

It was one of those areas where if you visit for the first time, you would feel like everyone was watching you and they probably were. It was a small community and everyone knew everyone, so a stranger would easily stand out. It wasn't entirely a safe place but it was safe for us, the people who had lived there long enough.

Living in the ghetto was so crazy because it almost felt like a no man's land where almost anything could happen. There were days where we would run for our lives for crazy reasons. One time the king had died and there were rumors that they needed seven heads to bury him with, so everyone ran indoors whenever we heard them coming, just to avoid getting your head chopped off and buried with the king's corpse.

It got to a stage where running for our lives no longer felt dangerous anymore because it became something that we got used to and this was way back, when I probably was around five years old. I can't count how many times parents had to rush to school to pick up their kids before the end of class just because something crazy was happening back at my street.

All of this things happened and somehow the whole of my family managed to survive it without suffering any injuries or losses, then it got to the year 2015 and my dad decided it was time we got out of the ghetto and just go live our lives in a peaceful and quiet environment.

So we had moved out of the area but my mom's shop was still there. She was going to sell the shop but needed a little time to set up her new business first, so I was left in charge of her old shop in our old area. This was during the time when I just finished high-school so I had all the time in the world to help out.

I would get on public transport in the morning to go down to my old area to go open the shop and then go back home around 8pm in the night. It was during this time that the infamous one million boys started terrorising my old street, the same place where my mom's shop was.

_{Photo by Dami Akinbode}

This boys are known criminals (armed robbers) that were so dangerous that sometimes before they come to your street to rob you, they would send you a letter, letting you know of their intentions, yup, they were that crazy. And what's even worse was their choice of weapon for their robbery, a machete. One morning I had gone to open my mom's shop only to hear stories of how they had cut one man that they had robbed the previous day.

They didn't kill him, just sliced him with their machete and left him for dead, luckily for him he was rushed to the hospital by his neighbours and survived. The whole thing got so scary to the extent where the youths in that area decided that enough was enough, so every night what they did was that they would set up bonfires at different locations and then walk around the street throughout the whole night, while holding various weapons.

Hearing the whole story every morning I went to my mom's shop made me thank God that we had moved out the time we did and it also didn't take long for my mom to sell the shop and I no longer had a reason to go back there.

Looking back at all of that and looking at where I am now with my family just makes me really appreciative because back then, I never knew there was anything wrong with the place we lived in until we moved out and now I never pray to go back there.