The real trouble with Hamzat - Punch Newspapers

Lagos State Deputy Governor and All Progressives Congress gubernatorial candidate, Obafemi Hamzat, defended his description of traffic congestion in the state as a “lifestyle” worth celebrating. Like a true Nigerian politician caught in an indecorous corner of his own (un-)making, he claimed his comment was “taken out of context” by social media users. But what he said was not so complicated that anyone could mishear him. He said, “Anyone who has crossed Third Mainland Bridge at 6 pm going from VI to Mainland knows that Lagos traffic is not just a problem; it is becoming our lifestyle. In fact, I suspect that many of us in this room, we produce things that are consumed, episode by episode, between Ojota and Obalende. So, in a way, traffic has been a patron of your industry. So, you must celebrate traffic. “That’s why we are Lagos.” Given that he made the comment about how traffic congestion serves the state’s economy while speaking on storytelling and the creative industry at Podfest Naija 2026, the public reaction was justified. What he holds is a romantic view of Lagos traffic he can afford to lovingly nurture from the lush comfort of a motorcade that blows poor motorists off the road just to transport him around the city. After all these years in power, he has probably lost memory of the soul-crushing helplessness motorists stuck in a traffic gridlock must feel. He claims the comment was his way of explaining how traffic has been productive for the content-creation economy because commuters fill the time by listening to content, rather than a commentary on road design or an implication that state authorities were content with the congestion. We understand what he is saying, but he still misspoke. This is not the only time in recent times that he has made a thoughtless comment either. Just last month, he was asked about the rising cost of housing in Lagos, and the best he could offer was advice young people to live with their parents or share accommodation. That was further proof that he is detached from the reality of daily life not only in Lagos but across the country. His disconnection reflects a political terrain where an overlord, rather than the majority, determines electoral victory. I will get to that shortly. Now, before their salaried spinmeisters crawl out of the woodwork to remind us that traffic congestion is not a uniquely Lagos problem, I acknowledge that other major world cities contend with it as well. While Lagos has a serious congestion problem, not every report concludes it’s the worst in the world. Some older reports put Lagos in the top 15, coming after cities like Manila (Philippines), Mumbai (India), Sao Paula (Brazil), and so on. Some more recent reports rank Lagos’ traffic congestion as the worst in the world. Whether the worst or one of the worst in the world is not a point of pride. The latest report by Numbeo suggests that Lagos motorists spend an estimated average of 68 minutes on a one-way commute. Manila was once recorded in the Guinness World Records for the longest commute, and it was logged at 45.5 minutes! Cities that are typically car-clogged, like New York and Seattle, take around 33 minutes and 27 minutes, respectively, for a one-way commute. So, yes, while the traffic congestion is not limited to Lagos, other leaders do not see it as a lifestyle to be celebrated. Instead, they treat it as a problem to be addressed through voting funds to upgrade infrastructure, enhance public transportation, and improve urban development to facilitate the movement of people, goods, and services. Listening to a dozen podcasts while stuck behind the wheel is not a good enough payoff for what is lost: man-hours, slower movement of goods and services through the state and subsequent price inflation, and high levels of carbon emissions from idling and fuming cars that degrade air quality. No, traffic congestion is not productive in the way Hamzat imagines. Rather than romanticising it, he should tell us how regularly state officials reassess urban arrangements and determine how well their efforts support effective state management. How are they optimising the state’s transportation systems so that their current facilities not only support the population but also ensure effective movement? It is easy—and cheap—to conclude that Lagos is perennially chaotic because of its teeming population. More populated cities in the world have far more cars on their roads, yet they still rank below Lagos State in the number of minutes it takes to commute because of efficient management. So, no, the problem of Lagos is not so much the number of people as our characteristic inability to organise people and spaces to ensure orderly growth. We are not overpopulated; we are just disorganised. Our cities are mostly unplanned, and our leaders lack both the vision and the fortitude to reorganise our urban spaces to make them more navigable. Rivers assembly received constituency project funds during emergency rule — Lawmaker 2027: Lagos NDC gov candidate pledges free education, healthcare if elected Nigeria @ 66: Aiyedatiwa calls for joint efforts on nation building Now, when I said Hamzat’s thoughtless and cavalier attitude towards that issue is a fallout of Lagos’ babasope politics and its mode of recruiting people for public office, it is because the man knows that, barring a cataclysmic change, his chances of becoming the next governor of Lagos State are as good as settled. Let me restate that. Unless Bola Tinubu wakes up tomorrow and some spirits whisper in his ears again, this time asking him to change the party gubernatorial candidate, Hamzat is as good as having won the 2027 governorship elections. We need not pretend that Lagosians get to decide their governors or most of their elected representatives. No, they are simply presented with a pre-made choice, and their duty is to affirm it, whether they like it or not. In fact, when the tactics of coercion, vote buying, and horse-trading with local power brokers that deliver for them every election start to wobble, they pull out their joker: Lagos is no man’s land. It has been a long time since anyone made that triggering statement, but their Yoruba social media influencers bring it (or its variant) up every election season to whip people into line. This formula has been undefeated through multiple electoral seasons, and Hamzat knows this too well. So Hamzat, knowing he is all but the next Lagos governor, can afford to toy with voters. He can dismiss the seriousness of traffic congestion as a hardship that need not be ameliorated because it pays off in trickle gains. Like a man whose parents are marrying a wife for him, he sees no need to develop his courting skills. Why waste brain cells thinking hard and deep to pitch an idea of how to ameliorate the problem of Lagos traffic congestion when people are going to vote for him anyway? For years now, we have talked about the economic costs of traffic congestion, but the problem has remained. In 2023, the Danne Institute for Research claimed the traffic costs Lagos N4trn annually. That is a whole lot of money waiting for a savvy administrator to mop up from the streets by improving systemic efficiency, but it is fancier (and less taxing) to designate it as a lifestyle worth celebrating. Hamzat is going to the Lagos government house, not as a visionary driven by the passion to improve the place, but as an obedient recruit of the powers and principalities sitting on the destiny of the state. He needs neither inspiration nor motivation from higher goals; in fact, his superpower will be passivity and obsequiousness. To last as governor, he only needs to remain loyal, a glorified bookkeeper doing his part to ensure that the only traffic that moves in the state is the one that seamlessly transports public funds into the bottomless bog of his paymasters’ agbada pockets. Abimbola Adelakun

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