How not to drive from Lagos to Accra.

"thebigbossyboss" (thebigbossyboss) 09/24/2014 at 10:42 • Filed to: None

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In 2008, I took a road trip across Nigeria. Near the end...we almost died.

The whole trip is here, but the ending is posted below.

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I have chronicled this adventure so that you may learn from our mistakes.

TL DR Edition: Driving a car with a Nigerian flag painted on it through an anti Nigeria riot is goddamn stupid.

We left Lagos for Ghana early in the morning in what turned out to be one the downright scariest rides of my whole life.

Firstly when we got to Seme, there is always, something....

At Seme, the Nigerian border guard was happy to see us once we told him we were coming from Bauchi, which happened to be his home town, he sent us off in less than 5 minutes no problem.

Entering Benin was another program altogether…they said because our papers were in order we should just pay them 10,000 CFA (west African francs) and we could go, our driver wouldn't have that, and we didn't even have 10,000 CFA anyways (Nigeria uses Naira, Ghana uses Cedis), so after about 2 hours, they finally let us go, the good thing about the border guards is that if they act stupid you can always call the commander who will generally set them straight (but only if they are acting really stupid).

We crossed through Benin and into Togo, no problem and crossed into Ghana less than an hour later.

It looked like we were home free, however little did we know, we had another obstacle waiting....(Remember the part where we discussed how we literally almost died...yeah that's part coming now...)

After we had crossed the Volta River bridge we were just about 30 kms from Tema, and about 60 kms from Accra, almost home, and we came across a line of stopped vehicles.

All the drivers were outside of their cars, so we knew something wasn't right. The driver got down, and after talking to the drivers in front we found out that a car had run over two peasants in the next town and in retaliation the towns people had blocked the road, stopping all traffic.

Anyways some drivers decided screw this, and went on the wrong side of the road to get closer to the front of the line.

As we approached the front of the line we stopped, now 3 cars from the barricade and waited, and waited, and the police eventually came, but we still waited.

About 2 hours passed and it started to get dark…This is when problems started.The townsmen brought out tires and random crap and started to make the roadblock, now a huge flaming road block. The fire went on for about 45 minutes, then the police started to make their move. They fired their guns into the air and used some smoke screens.

This was bad news and caused several events simultaneously.

Firstly all the car drivers started to turn around try to get the hell out of there, meanwhile the townsfolk started to grab 2x4's and rocks and smash the car windows, and of course ours being right at the front of the line, started to receive blows. Also turns out...it had been a Nigerian car that had run over and killed the villagers. Our car, had a giant flag of Nigeria painted on it, which made it a bit of a target.

All the car drivers realizing if they remained their cars would be torched, or rolled or lord knows what, started to U turn in a panic and just floor it back towards Keta and Togo, meanwhile, because of the rocks cars were losing windows, lights, mirrors, it was crazy, and damn scary, our van had a huge hole in it's back windshield as a huge rock was thrown at it, girls were screaming, the police were shooting, it was truly nuts.

As cars from the front of the line started to race back, at breakneck speed other cars further back in the line got the hint from the panic and tried anything to get further back, as the townsfolk went on a rampage.

As for what actually the outcome was I don't know, we didn't wait around to find out, as we gunned it for safety.

Everyone holed up behind a police roadblock further back.Cars were arriving all dented up, huge cracks in all the glass

.After about 2 hours, the police convoyed people up and got us through; the one side of the road where the cars were parked was covered with glass from windows and lights.

Truly one of the scariest incidents I have encountered