3This is the first in a series of essays I’m calling “Abuja Roads”—a meditation on driving, fury, beauty, and what the road reveals about who we really are. I love this city. But I also want to fight half its drivers. Welcome to the contradiction.
1. On Lane Wanderers and the Indecision of Character
Abuja.
The beautiful city I grew up in. The only city I’ve really known as home.
The roads are wide, like they were designed for dreaming. And at this time of year, between the end of May and early June—the city is in bloom. The red-petal trees are in full performance, screaming against the lush green of roadside lawns and leaves, bold and unignorable. The colours clash and sing. And it’s clear: rainy season has begun.
The trees always announce it before the skies do. And whenever I see those petals scattered across the road like flower girls passed through, I know change is here—maybe in the weather, maybe in my skin.
There’s something about Abuja’s views that gives you that “inside-outside” feeling—like you’re both far away and deeply within something. The quiet neighbourhoods. The polite, well-dressed people who mind their business.
And yet.
Driving in this city I love has revealed another side of its soul. A microcosm of its collective psyche. The road has become its own kind of mirror.
Of all the things that trigger me in this life, nothing outranks the drivers who refuse to pick a lane. The ones who perch their vehicles on the lane markings instead of inside a lane. They sway from line to line like the roads were custom-designed for their indecision. As if being halfway here and halfway there is a strategy. As if everyone should wait while they figure themselves out.
I’m convinced this kind of driving speaks to something deeper: a certain kind of indecision about life itself. Or maybe it’s greed. Selfishness. The kind that keeps all options open, even if it means blocking others from moving freely along their own paths.
But maybe—just maybe—the intensity of my reaction also says something about me. Why do I get so triggered by indecision and dogged self-preservation? Why does that energy offend me on such a cellular level? I don’t know. But I watch it. And that tension alone is worth writing about.
2. The Elbow Men and My Inner Gore
Then there’s another group of drivers—mostly taxi men, mostly male—who love to hang their non-dominant arm out of the window like a soft flag of ego. Always relaxed. Always on display.
When I was younger, my mum told me they do it to show off—that they can drive with one hand. A testament to skill. Or masculinity. Or both. The way she said it stayed with me—not angry, just… detached. That tone mothers use when they’ve seen something foolish so many times that it no longer surprises them. Only bores them.
I wish I could assume that same posture in my mind.
Instead, I find myself nursing dark, ridiculous thoughts. Fantasies. That one day, a car will clip one of those arms clean off. Blood spurting, dismembered limb flying across the tar, finally coming to rest on the pavement. Just that one wild moment of chaos—enough to teach them to keep their body parts inside the damn vehicle.
Of course, I know where this comes from. I’ve watched one too many serial killer documentaries. Vikings. Game of Thrones. All that gore. But still, I marvel at how easily my mind goes there. I marvel at my own capacity for absurd rage. And yet… I keep watching.
3. The GLK Spirit (a.k.a. Carry Your Wahala and Go)
Next up: the drivers of the GLK.
You know them.
The big-bodied Benz SUVs that move like they were born with entitlement in their engine. The ones who drive like they paid for the roads. Who act like your lane is optional when they need space.
I’ve stopped arguing with them. I simply move. Let them pass. I file them under “arrogance that comes with wealth,” especially in a country like ours, where money is a kind of armour, and driving a GLK is less about transportation and more about domination.
Carry your wahala and go.
4. “Na Woman Dey Drive”: On Gender, Skill, and Fragile Egos
But no rant about Abuja roads would be complete without the classic line:
“Na woman dey drive.”
Every woman who’s ever driven in this city has heard it. Usually from the moment a man realises that it’s you, a woman, in front of him—obeying traffic laws, being cautious, not needing to impress anybody.
He says it with that special brand of contempt. Like it explains every traffic situation. Like it’s a diagnosis for slowness. Or uncertainty. Or just existing with ovaries and a driver’s license.
Sometimes I pause. I ask myself: is this still 2025?
Do they really think driving is some mystical masculine birthright? Do they not know that driving—like cooking, like cleaning—is a skill? That it’s learned through repetition, refined through experience? I work in a skill-based field. Every day, I see women perform delicate, precise, life-altering procedures. So why is steering a Toyota the line some men can’t cross?
Maybe it’s not about driving. Maybe it’s about power. Space. Control. The same script, new location.
Just yesterday, one man threw his sense into the gutter—trying to overtake me from the right side of a single-lane road full of potholes. Nearly scratched both our cars just to prove that he was The Man. I just shook my head.
Na wa o.
I rest my case.
5. But Just Before I Rest…
There’s still so much more to say. I haven’t even touched on the ones who reverse on expressways or the drivers who use hazard lights as an apology in motion. But one essay at a time.
Maybe the roads are just a stage.
Maybe we’re all performing—anger, masculinity, survival.
And maybe, just maybe, the car horn is our national dialect for “Notice me.”
So yes, I rest my case.
For now.
Meestique,
The Empathic Social Observer.
The Empathic Social Observer 