The Tricycle Riders in my City (Patience is a virtue)

In the bid to be more consistent with blogging I have decided to make a mental note to draft posts ahead of time like waking up at 2:05 am on this sweet Thursday to write this and finally finishing the post on Friday at almost the same ungodly hour. I am on this new treatment for my keloid that keeps me up all night and messes with my entire system. Fam its hard 😫. The upside about this new decision is that I no longer have to make excuses for missing out on weeks of not writing here.

Hello, wonderful people its the weekend already and finally I (don't know about you) can take a breather. How was the long week of work?    Let's get started

     Patience is overrated, people will think they can stomach things when it happens to others but reverse the case and all hell will break loose. I have never been one to take things lightly forgive me if forbearance isn't my strongest suit.  Recently OPay-Oride came to my ton (if you know the app by Opera that is dominating almost everything in Nigeria then you have an idea of what I am talking about). The beautiful people of my city accepted the awoof they came with.. 'Go anywhere for just #50 naira'! for the first month, they launched Who no like better thing?  As much as the people embraced it, the haters that love to extort money from the tricycle riders weren't as accepting. It will later be revealed that they started to harass them because cyclists were smart enough not to carry cash on their rides. With the insurgence of a better transportation network in the city came plenty of wahala and shakara among the cyclists. Then came the time patience was all you needed to deal with them else you loose years of good home training because of these riders.

     The first annoying experience was with the guy that wouldn't go with the shortest route possible to my house because according to him OPay was watching him and will not pay him his fare for the trip. Bollocks! I thought this was funny until the next time when my very calm and collected colleague lost it over a rider's rudeness. Oga had kept us for almost 30 minutes at the office main gate with the continuous assurance that he was close to our location (you see why patience is a virtue) only for us to find out he was afar off, then he got to us and canceled the trip even before we could say anything because he couldn't take us all at once. My colleague became livid in an instant and in the time I had known the guy I was ultimately scared when he lost it and started a heated altercation with the rider. Thank heavens for the police officers who rescued the rider from the onslaught of verbal attacks from my dear friend. I am not one for heated arguments but this guy deserved every bit of what came to him. Another morning when I encountered this one rider that was so full of himself and would not apologize to my friend and I when he picked up a lady even though it was our ride. We had told him what he did was wrong but he stuck with giving us attitude till the ride was over. How can patience not be a virtue you have to imbibe to deal with people like this because the me who can not stomach BS was going to talk his ear off and give him a bad review or better still report him to the support team on the app. People with similar experiences will understand my pain this morning but I still think this little flaw in the system will be reduced at least not completely eradicated if these riders got some form of training. They need to understand that some good people sat and thought of making transportation easy and fair in your city so the least you can do is be nicer to your passengers and not try to sabotage this good deed by not being cordial enough or not having the proper etiquette. The customer as they always say is right every single time.

In every bad situation, there is good, I have legit had some great experience riding with some cyclist. One practically told me his life story and was grateful that this system came because it was going to be an easier way to pay off his tricycle loan. The respect you are accorded by some other riders will make you want to go anywhere with them over and over. Some riders who have a good understanding of the system sing never-ending praises of it and have accepted it has come to stay. This one rider expressed how the system has curbed a lot of hijacking of tricycles, robbery and illegal things those area boys around the ton did and many more good good stuff he hopes they can accomplish. My OPay story might be different from yours but the moral lesson of this post is that we owe it to ourselves to accept change in the littlest forms and work harder at making the country's transportation system better.


Share your OPay experiences and see who has a similar story to share


Your Favorite Blogger (turned Oride fan)
Helen Dami
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