Lagos Nightlife: Four Shots in Likwid!

So I’ve been messing around with my blog again, I now have ew category tabs on the top so you my dears can quickly navigate to wherever you want! I did this partly because, I think but I’m not sure, I’m going to expand my blog to talk about more things; namely my New Year goals, including schoolwork, weight management/loss and hair growth! There are so many things I want to achieve and I thought “Hey! Might as well blog about it!” So yeah, in the next few months there might be more changes after I decide what I would like to share with the rest of the world. Oh and I also have a cool new signature at the end of my posts! Already making myself better, hehe. Anyways, that was just an update, bear with me as I try and perfect it!

On to the matter at hand today… Have you ever gone out clubbing and on your way out of the club, just before you got into your car heard 4 warning shots being fired into the air?? Yes, warning shots, from an actual hand held gun, FOUR of them! Friday night for me was so crazy and so eventful that I really don’t know where to begin. After hearing various stories about last weekend including girls falling into gutters while trying enter Likwid (A club in Lagos), people being put in the boot of their cars and warning shots being fired I wasn’t too keen on the whole idea of Lagos night life. I mean, as a babe! How can they push me into a gutter because I want to enter club! God forbid! Some things in life are just not worth the hassle! I mean, what do you even do when you’re in the gutter? These things are pretty deep as well and far from empty, how would you get out? How would you clean yourself up after? Or would you just get into your car with all the sewage and murkiness and go home? The thought of it literally sends shivers down my spine! Especially as I’m a bit of a germophobe!

Anyways after having a less than mediocre night at Koko concert the day before, (read all about it here) I decided I had to give the Lagos nightlife another go! So once again I got up, got dressed and headed out. First stop was Churrasco’s, as a true Lagosian, you can never go to just one place on a night out. The minimum is three, with four being about average. I think this pertains to the fact that clubbing is completely free, for girls anyways, except when the bouncers are being dicks. Back to Churrasco’s, I arrived there just after 11 (no this is not late, clubs generally don’t shut till the people all leave and this is typically around 5.30/6 a.m., we go hard!) and was greeted by a multitude of familiar faces, amongst this was fellow blogger and friend Afam! This would have been fine if I wasn’t so socially awkward sometimes (not with Afam, the other people!) I just get nervous and want to run away half the time! But as a sure babe I took it in my stride, or at least tried to! At about 1.30 it was finally time to head to the club, getting there and seeing the crowd I was already pissed off, my mood can be so volatile. But why the heck were people crowding around the gates, trampling and shoving each other like it was the pearl gates to Heaven? Nigerians really need to learn the concept of LINES! Everyone is always trying to use connections to get in, sometimes it’s like n*gga shut the hell up and wait in line! Ugh. At some point during this wait the gates were opened a little bit too wide and there was a mini stampede to get in. Sadly but also luckily, I was not amongst those that entered the gate. My friends and I decided Likwid was a bust so we moved on to our next joint. Radisson Blu.

Radisson was so much bants, another friend and fellow blogger @iTweetBanter and his posse give me so much jokes! After hassling our waiter Mr Innocent to no avail to find us suya, iTweetBanter and I just decided to drink the night away, it’s either the cocktails here contain far much more alcohol or I’m just a super duper lightweight, or both. By my third one I was positively buzzed and going around in shades at night like a real industry cat! **coolface**. After getting suitably tipsy all 10 or so of us headed back to Likwid, this time we got in hassle free (kinda) and danced the night away, one of the pros of being tipsy is that you don’t care if everyone else around you is just sitting and staring, if you like the music you still dance! Sometimes lowering your inhibitions can be the best thing! At 5 in the morning when we finally decided it was time to head on home, we called the driver to pick us up. One foot in the car and all of a sudden, four warning shots are fired by some MoPo’s (Mobile Police)! I’ve never gotten into a car and ducked my head so quickly; there is arguably nothing more sobering than gun shots! The worst part is, the driver tried to drive away!! Thinking about it now it was funny but really if anything had gone wrong it would have been a disaster! All in all, the night was actually a good one, better than most other nights anyways. But Likwid, Likwid, Likwid! Sort yourselves out before you become the backdrop of a tragic news story!

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Koko Concert: The Israelites Journey to the Promised Land.

So ever since I’ve been back in Lagos I haven’t really gone out, granted it's only been 4 days but the holiday is only 2 weeks long! I’ve seen lots of people yes but mainly at family events and the like so I was excited to finally be heading out on the town last night. My destination of choice, Koko Concert at Eko Atlantic. I was pretty excited to be going to Eko Atlantic, they are basically building a whole new city on reclaimed land and I think it’s a massive incentive that Nigerians should be proud of! The night started like many others, my friends and I deciding what to wear etc. After all the usual hustle all 5 of us are finally ready to roll, we hop in the car and thank Jah that we haven’t been stuck in any traffic from Ikoyi, where we live, to Victoria Island (a.k.a V.I another district in Lagos), little did we know what was waiting for us in V.I. The traffic we hit on Bar Beach road was horrendous! It can’t even be described as snail pace, it was dead locked. No going back, no moving forward! Imagine my annoyance when I saw some people reversing on the other lane to get to the venue faster. You decide if they’re stupid or smart. We decided that the traffic was too much and so we hopped out of the car and followed the masses of people all walking to this same destination. Let me point out that in Lagos it is near impossible to be late for anything! This concert was advertised to begin at 7pm. By 10 pm when I got out of my car it still hadn’t started yet.

2200 hours: We just got out of the car and started walking to the venue; hopefully we would be there in 10 minutes tops.

2210 hours: Oh yay, we are at the gate. Haha to all the suckers to boujis to get out of the car! Wait hold on, where is the place? Why can’t I see it? Oh it’s just a bit further down you say? Okay we’ve already walked this far, might as well keep going.

2220hours: Oh look! Is that Mac? Him and his friends are still in their car, maybe we should have been patient! This walk is taking a bit long!

2235 hours: Yay! Ticket check, I can hear Wizkid’s Azonto playing through the speakers! “Baby dance iyo ke ji jo” it’s boogie time! Oh… Not yet? Where the hell is this place! Why are we still walking!!

2240 hours: I’m scared, I’m cold… We are in the middle of the dessert! It’s dark! Why are we still walking?? Are they taking us to do sacrifice to appease the mami waters (mermaids)?! **flashback scenes of Jenifa part 1 come to mind** my mother would be distraught if she ever found out what we were doing right now!

2250 Finally we are getting our wristbands! I can see the VIP bleachers. Wow, I’m exhausted and thirsty!

Yes you read the right, we walked for AN HOUR to get from the car to the frikken platform, I don’t know what Dapo Oyebanjo was thinking when he allowed us to perform this Israelites journey! During this trek of life I saw all sorts, girls in their Loubs, boys in Tods and I was wondering if they had missed the memo that this concert was on a beach! That is, there is sand everywhere! I felt especially bad for the people who thought their jeeps could compete with the sand. Have you ever seen a tyre whizzing around so fast it’s causing it’s own tornado? My brothers was a Mercedes G-55 stuck in the sand on the way in and on the way back out (yes, we had to walk AGAIN!) the car was still there!! The poor owners, I wonder how they got out eventually!

The show finally started at around 2330 hours and needless to say the crowd was dead! Imagine if you were one of the few that got there on time? Or even before 10! You would have waited at least 2 hours! All in all I would say it was mediocre, there were a couple of awesome acts! My personal favourites were Godwin the violinist, DRB, Burna Boy, Iyanya, Tinie Tempah and part of Big Sean. Pusha T and co were just making unnecessary noise on the stage! Idris Elba as the MC was a complete nuisance, my n*gga was clearly drunk as a skunk! His voice even began to annoy me after some time. Seeing D’banj come on stage in his kingly robes had to be the funniest thing ever, I had such a nostalgic moment, thinking of back in the day when D’banj was the hottest shit ever, he was the best entertainer Nigeria had ever seen! Oh how the mighty have fallen, he might be moving up in the world but his fan base at home is waaay below par, everyone started leaving as soon as he came on. All I wanted to do was dance to Wizkid and Davido, but alas... they never showed up! Only in Nigeria does such happen without even so much as an apology!

There were many many more things wrong with the night, for instance how do you oversell tables of 1 million Naira (£4000/$6500) each and make some of those people have to stand! And then halfway through the night tell these same people to balance their weight because the structure on which they sit might fall! Then as if all of that wasn’t enough, Dapo now had the guts to tell the people in regular and VIP to apologise to the people in VVIP as if we hadn’t gone through our own fair share of bull! (don’t ask what VVIP stands for... I don’t know). Unfortunately, if I keep typing I run the risk of writing a novella! Hmm, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Maybe I can call it ”The Israelites Journey to the Promised Land. NOT”