May 2nd, i travelled to Lagos by road using the service of one of the transport companies based in the east. It was time for our luggage to be arranged on the bus before passengers got in and there they were, these three elderly women. I’ll just call them EW1, EW2 and EW3.
The mistake the manager of the transport company had made was not get his staff to check the luggage of the passengers before issuing individual tickets.
- EW1 had two big Ghana must go bags, two traveling bags and a little girl but she only paid for one seat.
- EW2 had one really big Ghana must go, one big keg of groundnut oil, two travelling bags and a little girl.
- EW3, My God! She had two big kegs of palm oil, three sacks of food stuffs and fruits, one Ghana must go bag and two travelling bags.
Immediately the manager saw the their luggages and that of the other passengers, he immediately came up with three solutions;
- The women join the next bus which was leaving fifteen minutes after our bus was leaving. They all said no.
- The women joined the bus but have some their luggages waybilled to them the next day. Still, they refused.
- I had paid for two seats so i could be comfortable and place my box on the seat beside me. The manager asked me to please give up of my seats so we could use for their luggages which i eventually gave up and we went with this option.
After the luggage had been put on the bus, we all took turns to seat according to our seat numbers. It was obvious the bus was choked up and then before the door was closed, EW1 and EW2 started complaining that they were not comfortable. This was when i got upset. You want be comfortable yet you brought all that luggage and paid for only one seat.
The company had made it clear that only one traveling bag and hand luggage was what was allowed for passengers. Anything other than that, you had to get an extra seat.
The children with these women would most likely grow up to think this was okay. I mean, we are supposed to learn from our elders and if they are behaving this way how are we then supposed to behave?
This whole situation had me thinking, there were options these women could have taken, logical ones o, but they refused and would rather i gave up my seat i paid for them and the worst part was they didn’t even want to pay for excess luggage. How selfish.
The manager had to put his foot down and move all three of them to the next bus so we all had to alight, the luggages on the bus had to be rearranged, then we boarded once again. This process took an hour thirty minutes of our time.
This is just a warm reminder that we still look up to you so please let your behaviour be worthy of emulation.
Photo: cengage.com
Candid Christian 
cant be overemphasized.