Tracking Traffic in Nigeria through Twitter

Traffic in Nigeria can be a struggle, with tailgaters, speeding and inevitable work-delaying traffic jams, commutes can quickly become an acute stress. In a country ranked as Africa’s most populous region, it is no surprise that traffic in Nigeria is a budding issue for its citizens. A trip to the local grocery store – that should take you an hour - can take triple the time due to the traffic congestion in the country.

The reason for the growing volume of traffic can be attributed to a plethora of issues including; high numbers of privately owned vehicles and poor infrastructure. Although these issues are apparent, rather than complain Nigerians have found ways to manage their activities around traffic patterns.

To help plan your trip around traffic, here are the best Twitter pages to follow

1.      @Gidi_Traffic provides Nigerians with live updates of areas in the country experiencing high levels of traffic, through crowd sourced updates posted on its Twitter page. With over 400,000 followers and over 500k Tweets, @Gidi_Traffic  has been providing live traffic updates to Nigerians around the country since 2011 through follower updates. The main aim of@Gidi_Traffic is to alert drivers of high traffic areas, it also lends itself as a platform for answering inquiries from anyone who requires information on any subject of interest. Although@Gidi_Traffic relies largely on crowd sourced updates, the page provides videos of gridlocked areas. These videos are very useful to individuals looking for real time validation of the traffic situation.

2.      @Tsaboin is a traffic monitoring Twitter account that was developed to help Lagosians beat traffic. @Tsaboin provides links to its main website for users to view traffic cams and up to date updates on traffic in Lagos.

3.      Through its Twitter feed, @TrafficChiefNG provides followers with traffic updates. @TrafficChiefNG provides its followers with updates on pending issues pertaining to traffic. Recently,@TrafficChiefNG  launched a petition #NoMoreTrafficRobbery to help curb the issue of traffic robberies. The aim of the #NoMoreTrafficRobbery is to garner government intervention in eradicating traffic robberies.

Get live traffic updates by following @Gidi_Traffic, @TrafficChiefNG , @Tsaboin

and Hashtags like #LagosTraffic today!