“Live in New York City once, leave before it makes you hard.” If Mary Schmich was a Lagosian, she would have said this about Lagos and not New York. The parallels between these two metropolises lie between sublime and mundane. Consider a universe of ant colonies where sugar and sweets are concentrated in a single colony; the ensuing population-pull would be unsustainable, especially the noise that overwhelms every creature in it.
Such is the state of the less affluent areas of a megacity. In 2024, New York Times analyzed data from 311 calls made around the city and noise took the number one spot. I doubt we would get a different result if the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency should do the same. Lagosians who were born and bred in the city seem to have blended in with noise.
However, you only need to leave Lagos to agree with Damilare Kuku that Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad. I feared I was phonophobic, but even if I were, my eyes could see speakers and megaphones everywhere. It is really difficult to organize one’s thoughts in this hubbub. As I write, some lads in the hood are having a good time blasting speakers as though it is happening in my room. In Lagos today, anyone can mount speakers, turn up the volume to maximum and damn the consequences – because there’s none.
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To escape noise in Lagos is to attempt the impossible feat of running from one’s own shadow. Riding in the front seat of a danfo on my way from work, the driver stepped on the brakes to add to the long queue of traffic congestion as we approach Egbeda roundabout from Iyana-Oba. Without sparing a moment’s thought, the alcohol-intoxicated driver honked incessantly. My God, what an irritant! “Why did you have to do that? Can’t you see the traffic?” I queried him. Before I could finish speaking the trailer behind us startled me with a louder honk. I jerked out of my seat but was pulled back by the seat belt. I flashed my five fingers at them and said “Waka! Shege banza! Are you mad?” I will beat you if you don’t stop that!” They continued as if I were a fly on their windscreen. Then it struck me – I had just become one of the mad men in Lagos.
Ah, finally home. I sighed as I alighted from the keke at Gate and waving at the friendly Lagos Neighborhood Safety Corps officer sitting on a bench. I wondered if he had ever paused to consider the noise from the loud megaphones echoing “POS! POS! POS! Withdraw your money here!” We can see your signpost – why the megaphone? The sexually transmitted disease herbal medicine man must surely be deaf from years of exposure to the relentless noise from his own megaphone. No one wants to be left behind in this hullabaloo. Even those who spread their wares by the road have speakers. Tomorrow the orange hawkers and kpomo sellers would join them.
Lagos is a city that refuses to be ignored, and its noise is perhaps the most honest expression of that refusal. Every megaphone, every honk, every blaring speaker is a sound of a city straining under the weight of ambition and survival. Yet there’s a cost to all of this sound. This is to the government to engage the Lagos Neighborhood Safety Corps to curb this menace. Megaphones and speakers should be prohibited except for certain categories but with license and stipulated decibels. Lagos could be more excellent with effective noise regulations.
