For six months, graphic designer and illustrator Tolami Openiyi travelled between the Lagos mainland and island for his internship, relying on Danfo buses, Maruwa tricycles, and BRT buses to get around. Like many Lagos commuters, he experienced the delays, discomfort, unexpected conversations, and constant negotiations that come with public transportation. Somewhere between these journeys, he began paying closer attention to the details around him. The experience inspired Enter With Your Change, a digital illustration project that documents the peculiarities of Lagos public transport through the eyes of someone who has experienced them firsthand. The title borrows a familiar phrase from bus drivers and conductors, one that anyone who regularly uses public transportation in Lagos will immediately recognise. Through the project, Tolami turns the stress and humour of everyday commuting into a colourful record of life in the city.

Published in 2023, Enter With Your Change takes viewers inside a typical Lagos Danfo, capturing details that are easy to overlook during a hurried commute. One illustration shows the driver's rearview mirror, which serves another purpose beyond monitoring traffic: counting passengers to ensure their fares match the number of people on board. Another highlights the loose wires protruding from the vehicle's stereo, improvised into charging points for drivers and passengers whose phones are running low. There are stickers celebrating Fuji musicians, reflecting the musical preferences of individual drivers, and markings on the windscreen left by agberos to indicate that road levies have been paid. These are the kinds of details that make a Lagos bus instantly recognisable. By paying attention to them, Tolami captures not only what public transportation looks like, but also the habits, personalities, and informal systems that shape the experience.

Tolami's interest in documenting Lagos extends beyond the Danfo. In New Whip! Maruwa, he explores the pride of a tricycle driver becoming a vehicle owner, acknowledging the significance of that achievement in an industry where many drivers operate vehicles belonging to someone else. His painting Lagos Weather draws inspiration from the experience of rainfall in the city, while Roadside explores the atmosphere of travelling by road, from the surrounding landscape to the people encountered along the way. These projects reveal an artist interested in the familiar environments and experiences that shape everyday Nigerian life. A graduate of Estate Management from Obafemi Awolowo University, Tolami works with tools including Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, developing illustrations that combine defined shapes, detailed environments, and carefully considered colours. His attention to objects, structures, and their surroundings makes even ordinary urban scenes worth looking at more closely.

Beyond public transportation and street scenes, Tolami's portfolio includes an extensive collection of illustrations documenting buildings, landmarks, businesses, and everyday infrastructure. He has illustrated the National Theatre in Iganmu, Marina Train Station, Wema Bank in Marina, and the Abuja National Mosque, whose architectural patterns also inspired a separate illustration study. Other pieces explore more ordinary subjects, including an NNPC petrol station, a power transformer, a laundry shop, a bakery storefront, and a basketball hoop. His work also extends into digital painting, product illustration, music cover art, and graphic design, including projects such as Kaabo Cards and branding work for Sporting Lagos. In his painting Àsìkò, meaning Time, he moves away from documenting physical environments to consider how success and memory change with time. The variety of subjects demonstrates his ability to move between observational illustration, personal expression, and applied design while maintaining an interest in the details that give each subject its identity.

What makes Tolami's illustrations engaging is how much of their meaning comes from experiences people already know. He doesn't need to invent an elaborate scene to communicate the atmosphere of Lagos; a bus driver's mirror, a crowded dashboard, or a familiar building can carry an entire story. In an earlier reflection on developing his artistic style, he observed that sometimes the smallest details hold the grandest stories, a sentiment that has continued to shape his work. His illustrations preserve aspects of Nigerian life that are so ordinary they often escape documentation, recording the visual character of places and routines that continue to change. From the exhausting experience of commuting across Lagos to the pride of owning a Maruwa or the architecture of a familiar landmark, Tolami finds stories in the things people encounter every day. Enter With Your Change is a particularly fitting example of that approach, transforming a phrase usually associated with the stress of public transportation into a memorable celebration of the city and its people.