Through the Windscreen: The Story Behind Night Runs

It Started With a Car

Night Runs began, strangely enough, with a car I loved too much to let go.

It was a 2013 Ford Edge, which I bought brand new around 2014. I was working in oil and gas at the time, and that car was a statement. Big, heavy, powerful and surprisingly efficient on the road, it was my first real experience of an American car, and I enjoyed every mile of it.

The arrangement was that you owned the car outright after four years. I did, and then I kept it for four more. Eight years in all. But somewhere around the sixth year, the brilliant ride began to complain. Maintenance issues turned into replacements of critical components, and by the seventh and eighth years, the car was spending more time at the technician’s workshop than it was serving me.

The status symbol had become a lesson in how things that once worked well can quietly stop working, one repair at a time. I did not know it yet, but that lesson would become the heart of a story.

Five Fifteen in the Morning

During one of those prolonged repairs, I still had to get to work. Once or twice I joined friends at the bus stop to catch a lift. Then I made a different decision: I would simply take an Uber.

For that season, my day began with a ride-hailing car at 5:15 every morning. I have never been a quiet passenger, so I talked with the drivers. How were they faring? Was it profitable? Did the numbers make sense? What did a day, or a night, on the road really look like?

They did not tell me stories. What they gave me was something more useful: honest glimpses into what they dealt with every single day. And I was meeting them at a particular hour. At 5:15, many of them were coming off the long night, tired, unguarded and closer to the truth of the job than at any other time.

The Windscreen and the Mirror

Somewhere in those conversations, Night Runs was conceived. I began to imagine a man who sits in that driver’s seat every night and watches the city through two frames.

Through the windscreen, he sees the city ahead: the roads, the checkpoints, the institutions that are supposed to help people and so often do not. Through the rear-view mirror, he sees his passengers, the people seated behind him with their secrets, their fears, their schemes and their quiet desperation.

That man became Adio, a night-shift ride-hailing driver in Lagos. Through his eyes, I wanted to show how people truly behave when they think no one is paying attention, and how much of a society’s failing systems can be seen from the front seat of an ordinary car.

Why I Write

I believe the purpose of our writing is not only to entertain. Stories should also bring critical issues in society to the fore, and let readers see them from a perspective that helps them truly appreciate what is at stake.

A report can tell you that a system is broken. A story can make you sit in the car with someone who pays the price for it. That is what I want Night Runs to do: start conversations that travel beyond the page, and perhaps, in some small way, contribute to change.

Adio is not a symbol, and the passengers are not lectures. They are people. But in their choices and their losses, I hope readers will recognise the Lagos night, and the systems we have all learned to live with when we should not have to.

From Blog Episodes to a Book

In 2023, I finally put the story down. Night Runs first appeared as a series of episodes right here on this blog, written and published over two to three months. Each episode was a new night and a new passenger, and writing it in public, one run at a time, was a genuinely interesting experience.

Now those episodes are growing into a full book. The world is deeper, the threads run longer, and Adio’s journey carries consequences that a single episode could never hold. If you missed them, the original episodes are still here on the blog. Read them as the first draft of Adio’s story, and stay with me as the book takes shape.

It all goes back to a tired car in a workshop and a 5:15 ride to work. Sometimes the stories that matter most are the ones being lived quietly in the front seat, if only we would ask the driver how he is doing.