Monday! That word scares Lagosians like us. This is especially true since the time the whole world decided to visit Lagos every Sunday night, leaving us stunned in the morning. Where did all these people usually come from?

You see, they want to disgrace us, they want to make us late for work on the first workday of the week, but we are smarter. We Lagosians have always been smarter than what life throws at us.

Why is it said that time is money? If we convert the times we spend in transit in this city, we would be very rich. Sometimes, each day, we spend a an average of a quarter of our day in traffic.

To annoy us more, the fares would go up on Monday mornings, the same as it would on Friday evenings when we ought to go home and ‘Thank God it’s Friday’. Despite these, there are those shocking Mondays that we Lagosians don’t care about being late for work because we know that every other person will be late, everyone everywhere in Lagos.

On those Mondays, money will be time. The richer one is, the faster he will arrive at his destination. The wealth class will be thus:

1. The POOREST: A person who drives his own car. He is stuck in traffic and has no alternative but to crawl along, sometimes sleeping in traffic. He arrives work by 3pm.

2. The POORER: The one who has a driver in an official or personal car. He can leave and find his way via public transport while the car arrives later.

3. The POOR: A person who desperately uses public transportation even when the fares are triple because he is afraid of losing his job. He is late and beats himself for not arriving on time only to realize that he is the first to arrive.

4. The RICH: A person who uses a motorcycle taxi or okada. Okadas are one of the most expensive means of transportation in Lagos, especially on the highway.

5. The RICHER: The person who waits on an eternal queue for BRT buses or a bus with the right fare, no matter how long it will take.

6. The RICHEST: the man who strolls on foot, to where there may be no traffic. If there is no end in sight, he goes home.

7. The BOSS: the one who has the option of flying to work in an helicopter, but sits at home and calls off the Monday meeting after others have suffered to arrive.

So the Money you have in Lagos determines the time you could get to work by overcoming the Lagos Monday traffic because in Lagos, time is not money, but money is time.

It is another chocking Monday and we know which category we fall into, but leave our Lagos for us, abeg.

#we look for a way to beat the hassles of life. Lagos is Life!

(Culled from my 2017personal journal EKOes, vol 4 [reLIVING MEMORIES])