Normalised Insanity By Dele Farotimi

I have had several reasons to interrogate the reflexive presumption of sanity to anyone that has willingly exercised the option of living in Nigeria when they could have lived legitimately in any other part of the world. Please note, I did not say civilised world.


I had an experience on a train ride from Ibadan to Jos in 1986/87. The years have fused now, and the memories of specifics have began to wane but I am certain that it was either the one or the other. I was already a student of English Language and Linguistics in LASU but I was pursuing my perennial bid to gain admission elsewhere to read Law. And Unijos was the subject of my very first train ride.


My friends, neighbours, and cousins in-law, Nimbe and Toye Oyatobo, were already studying in Unijos, and they were heading back to school on the train. Bad as it was, epileptic at its very best, the Nigerian Railway Corporation ran from Dugbe in Ibadan and from its platform we commenced our journey to Jos. I believe the estimated travel time were a couple of days but we ended up spending a total of 6 days. Breakdowns after breakdowns, stops that lasted longer than expected in ever more exotic towns.


It was at Kuru that he entered the carriage with the man he later told me was his brother. Or perhaps, he entered at some point and said he was going to Kuru. But I have never forgotten that he had some kind of association with the town of Kuru. I do not now recall his name. I am not even sure that I asked. Or if we were ever introduced. I cannot now remember how we came to be talking. But he told me his story, and I shall share it with you.


He was heading back home, newly discharged from a native psychiatrist clinic. The sort where men are chained up and bound, where men grew massive dreadlocks, both on their heads and chins, and the length of mental infirmity and ranking in the hierarchy of madness is determined by the nattiness of the dreads, and the proliferation of lice.


I recall being moved almost to tears. The day was far spent, but I cannot forget the absolute certainty I had about the sanity of the man that I was speaking with. There was a sadness about him, a painful sadness. But absolutely no hint of insanity. “Why?” I asked? Why?


“They said I was mad” he retorted. He saw the clear confusion with which I beheld him, and my obvious befuddlement. And then he told me his story. He found that he could understand the animals in the house, the birds, and the ones in the field. He could understand them all, and they could understand him. But to everyone else, he was a mad man. This was what earned him his stay at the healer’s place.


I warrant with every shred of whatever credibility you may care to invest me with, that Dr. Doolittle has nothing to do with this story, and I am certain that I have shared this experience with friends going back over three decades, and a few are certain to remember. This is a true story. I looked at my new friend again, glanced at his brother who wasn’t part of our conversation, and I saw a completely sane person. So I asked him, if he was alright now? His response has become the prism through which I have come to define sanity. And of course, insanity.


“Oh yes!” He answered me calmly and with verve, a beautiful smile on his face as he spake. “I learnt to keep my conversations with my animal friends, to myself and them. What is the point of seeking to explain what they would never understand?” And then he proceeded to tell me how he learnt to tame his own urge to share the knowledge of his gift with the people around him. How he was gradually released back into the community, and how his acquired taciturnity earned him his eventual release, and the homecoming that I was sharing with him.


The mad man, is the one that behaves contrary to the prevalent standards of acceptable behavior in his society, however large or small, the society in focus is. My friend was deemed insane by the larger society, his own family, his loved ones, and every other sane persons. The same people have now deemed him cured of his madness, and there he was. He seemed just as sane as I believed myself to be.


How sane are we? The people who are known as Nigerians, how sane are we? Are we truly sane by the standards of the world? Okay, let’s forget about the ones who have been sane enough to find escape to other places, however unhappy they might be in exile. We, who have elected to stay behind, how sane are we?


Have you looked around you? Have you considered how we have become conditioned to living like rats? How many hours do you spend in traffic every day? Okay, Mr and Mrs Big People, you’re driven around in air conditioned cars with sirens blaring, how sane are you? How do you think your cloistered, pampered, and overprotected brood will cope when you are gone? Oh, you think you are going to live forever?


Drive to one of our roundabouts in Lekki, wherever you may find one, and you can observe the totality of our collective insanity. Witness the size of the circumference that you have to transverse in the name of roundabouts. The lanes are usually three before you approach the roundabouts, narrows into two as you are entering the roundabout, and just then you will be well advised to jettison all your illusions of sanity.


None of our several betting shops would offer the odds, but assuming there exists one that would, I am happy to bet that less than 10% of Nigerian drivers, are restrained by any form of driving education. We all, with scant exceptions, took one of the several corruption paved roads, in acquiring our driving licenses. If  you would have wanted to do the right thing, the system made it practically impossible to do so, and if you are the punctilious type, you can take your space amongst the silly 10%. It is a crime to be lawful in an unjust society.


The man in the roundabout waits for the one entering the roundabout, Nigerian driving custom has evolved to the point where majority of our drivers have changed the rule. The man who has right of way believes that the one that should be waiting for him is the one that should go, and the one that should wait, believes that he owns the road.


If you are one of us, the idiotically  idealistic, you’d pause in the knowledge of his right, and he would abuse you for wasting his time with what he would interpret as your lack of driving nous. You can expect the ones behind you to join the chorus of abuses punctuated by blaring horns, and be prepared for the worst, when you are the one in the roundabout, burdened by the insanity of assuming, that you are driving in a sane society.


Before I X-ray the role of the government in the madness engendered by the Lekki roundabouts, I intend to examine two pieces of knowledge gained from the years spent learning seemingly disconnected theories, principles, and precepts, but which life has come to show are connected. The first is the principle of social engineering. And the second is tied to the use of design choices, as a tool for behavioral modifications. Bear with me, they are connected.


Every design choice is informed by the use intended for the subject. Utilitarianism is the highest consideration of the designer, and I have taken this position without being unmindful of the several movements in architecture and design, that would be happy to argue otherwise, and rightly too. I have spoken not as an expert. The Lekki roundabouts are the way they are, because they were designed to be like that.


Advertisement billboards are featured in each and everyone of the roundabouts. The road was designed with the revenue streams from these billboards a primary design consideration. The Lagos State government provides ample proofs for my painful conclusion.


When Ambode came anew to the seat of power, there were 7 roundabouts between Lekki Phase 1, and Chevron. I believe the distance is approximately 7 Kilometers. The unashamedly stolen, poorly redesigned, badly constructed, and now tolled Lekki-Epe Expressway, was even worse than it is now. Denizens of Lekki were stuck in unending traffic jams that had no respect for the time of day. The road was permanently jammed.


The fact that Ambode travels to Epe probably brought our plight to his attention, and the road being the only one that lead to Epe from the island, made him related to our pains. Ambode ordered the removal of five out of the seven roundabouts, and the installation of traffic lights at what were once roundabouts. The first two being the sole survivor of the maddening roundabouts that once blighted the road before Ajah.


The Lagos State government knows what effect the roundabouts have on traffic, but it has deliberately chosen to erect the roundabouts, instead of the several other options, because pecuniary considerations, trumps the overall good of the citizens. I have heard tales told, of how Jakande settled for the old roundabouts, few as they were, because his government could not afford the cost of the bridges originally designed for the points where the roundabouts were. He argued, I was informed, that the bridges would not be required, until the road came due for replacement thirty years from thence, and that his successors would build it then. I doubt that he envisaged the pestilence he has lived to witness.


We are a people untouched by insanity, but our survival in the land of our birth, and sojourn, demands that we embrace the insanity that governs our land. Sanity is an unaffordable luxury, in the land of my birth, and to be sane here, is the very definition of madness.