Wasiu Kareem is the passenger sitting next to me. He says, “It gets worse in evenings when people are returning home from Apapa. The train gets very jam-packed. There are a lot more people standing in each coach than those sitting. Some people hang outside the train, and some sit on the train. Most fans in here don’t work. It gets so stuffy that sometimes someone faints and has to be given a seat. It is really unbearable on the evening train.”

One woman named Iswatu Akewugberu says, “I live at Ijoko and I trade at the Iddo market. I like to board this train because it lets me get to the market very early to sell my wares. In fact, I don’t mind standing because there aren’t usually such a lot of people in the morning. And as the train progresses and people get down at various stations, there’ll eventually be a place to sit. But coming back in the evening, the journey is a torture. It is usually very sweaty inside. It is not comfortable at all.”

Meanwhile, as our journey is getting on, many passengers in this coach are interacting with each other familiarly. The train stops and parks at one station to let another train approaching from the opposite direction pass.

There’s only one functioning rail-road, and so two trains cannot pass through at the same time. One has to wait at a station for the other to pass.

Wasiu tells me, “The people in each coach know each other well. For example, many of us in this coach right now have been commuting together in this same coach for a fairly long time. So there’s a communal feeling, and when a new person comes in for the first time, we will know it. The ride is really fun.”

“The only problem is the poor service. The officials on the train cannot do anything about it. The trains are poorly maintained. Passengers are uncomfortable and are grumbling, but it’s like the management doesn’t care.”