Dear Mr Disu,
Let me first congratulate you on the quality of your program.
Your guests today on the program appear to be the most ‘passionate’ of the current members of the state executive council, as they both hit the ground running immediately they were sworn in.
The environment ministry organised a stakeholders’ meeting of “Greening Lagos” at the Muson Centre , whilst the transport ministry organised a “Transport Summit” at the Muson Centre, Lagos.
We are all products of our environment, in so much as is being done in the areas of the environment, it would appear that we have only scratched the surface, as the quality of our environment is far below the quality of any civilised environment in the developed world.
You would recall your growing up days whilst you attended MBHS, what Lagos Island, Ikoyi and Victoria Island looked like. They were at par with any settlements in the developed world. The lawns were well manicured, the buildings looked well maintained,everywhere was green and wooded. There was beauty, order, serenity. There were no potholes on the roads, the drains were kept flowing and clean. The ikoyi park, race course and campos square parks were well maintained and accessible to the public.The young ones had places to go to dissipate their energies.
You may wish to find out from your guests where and when we got it wrong.
Do you realise that every new settlement in Lagos is worse that than the old neighbourhood? Even the old settlements are continually blighted and overcrowded.
Take a look at Suru lere, Ebute Metta, Apapa, Festac or GRA Ikeja. They are a shadow of what they used to look like. Meanwhile new settlements like Lekki Phase 1,Victoria Island annex and Lekki – Ajah axis settlements are nothing to write home about.
My candid opinion is that successive governments after that of General Yakubu Gowon’s regime had failed us.The civil servants in these regimes are the greatest culprits!
Let us look at the issue of the roads. Back in the days, there was the Public Works Department responsible for the maintenance of our roads. There was road tax included in every litre of petrol bought.The vehicle license also had road tax. There were statutory allocations for continuous road repairs and construction in our budgets and the funds were never misapplied! We do not seem to have the right structure any longer and standards and values have been seriously eroded.
On the environment, i will probably put the blame at the doorsteps of the government ministries. During the LEDB days, they developed New Lagos, now referred to as Suru Lere. By any standard, it was one of the best settlements then, in West africa. This board was transformed to LSDPC, who was responsible for the development of the New Towns including Lekki town and Satellite town. These two settlements fell short of internationally accepted standards. Even other new settlements as in Ogudu, Magodo,Omole, Dolphin, Osborne, Banana Island had serious issues of access. For communities with such a high population, the vehicular access must be a high priority.
With increase urbanisation and commercialisation, there were inadequacies in the provisions of commercial centres and offices and business parks for people to work. Too much emphasis was placed on residences.Since nature abhors vacuum, a lot of the residential areas were turned into offices and commercial centres,which had its adverse effects on such neighbourhoods.
Apart from inadequacies in design,the corrupt tendencies of our town planners in the Ministry of physical planning have equally worsened our environment with the questionable approvals given some developments.
On our Transport and Road networks, there is an admission of the fact that our road network is grossly inadequate! Most of our major roads in Lagos are in the North South axis,(i.e Ikorodu Rd, Western Avenue,Agege Motor Road,) without any corresponding links on the east-west axis.
The traffic problems are also exacerbated by very poor junctions and poor state of our roads. Most of the federal roads are not lined and there are are inadequate road signs. Even at that , there is a serious lack of public enlightenment and awareness. A lot of motorists are ignorant of traffic rules.
Finally, the BRT lanes as designed by LAMATA have worsened the flow of traffic in and out of Lagos through ikorodu road and western avenue. With increasing population and traffic, one would have expected the hitherto 6lane Ikorodu road to be widened into 12 lanes or made into a double decker road with the lower deck serving as the bus transit route while the upper deck will be for fast moving cars. Rather, the lanes have been reduced to 3 with very dangerous kerbs used to demarcate the dedicated bus routes that don’t have enough buses to warrant a dedicated route.The demarcation seriously reduces the speed of the vehicles and puts a lot of pressure on the outer ring road as most motorists avoid the ikorodu road because of the hazards. This has contributed to the worsening traffic situation in Lagos.
If we cannot have a double decked highway on Ikorodu road, we should not reduce the number of lanes. I believe the kerbs should be removed and cat eyes put in its place as demarcation (as done in Pretoria) to make the roads wider and less hazardous.
There are other observations which we may have to look into but that will be for another day.
Warm Regards,
Up Sibi!
Gbenga Onabanjo
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