The week which ended on Sunday, September 9th, 2018 when I left Nigeria on vacation to the United States was one that I twice faced the horrors of mindless traffic gridlock on Nigerian roads leaving one emotionally traumatised and financially sapped. Arriving in Washington next day brought relief from the insanity on Nigerian roads, a manifestation of a general disorder that is making the country a hellhole on earth.
The traffic horrors started mid-week, on Wed. Sept. 5th, 2018 while returning to Lagos from Iwo, Osun state, preparatory to my trip to the U.S. scheduled for Friday, 7th September. Shortly after Mowe, the traffic grounded to a halt and lunatic drivers began forming four extra lanes on both sides of the two-lane road thereby creating a chaotic six-lane gridlock as it finally narrowed to one lane at the overhead bridge construction site in Ibafo. It took those of us who stayed on the two main lanes over two hours of sweat and stress to cover the barely four kilometer stretch of road.
Along these four kilometers of traffic madness, there was the conspicuous absence of officers of both the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and those of Ogun State Traffic Control Agency (TRACE) to restore order. The most provocative aspect was to see three FRSC officers at the end point of the gridlock stopping those on the legitimate lanes and passing more of the motorists who formed extra lanes !!! I was literally enraged. I had to confront one of the officers with the name tag A. O. Adekunjo on why those who created the gridlock should be passed at the detriment of those of us who stayed in line. His infantile explanation was that they had to pass those on extra lanes to free up the traffic! This attitude of condoning traffic disorder by FRSC officers, over the years, is what has perpetually encouraged many motorists to form extra lanes, making law abiding motorists look stupid. It should be SHAMEFUL to FRSC that, over all these years, the leadership, seemingly suffering mental freeze, has been unable to think up a solution to the notoriety of traffic gridlock on the Lagos-Ibadan so-called Expressway.
I wrote a column article in Peoples Daily in 2011 on FRSC lack of passion for road orderliness following which the then Corps Marshall, Osita Chidoka, invited me to FRSC headquarters in Abuja, apparently to disabuse my mind. I was conducted round the organisation’s facilities and was impressed by its data gathering. But FRSC is, primarily, not a research institute; rather it is a road sanity restoration implementation agency, a mandate in which it has largely failed. Rather than FRSC officers congregating at the head of traffic gridlock, they could prevent it with the simple measure of stopping and deflating two tires of the vehicles of offending motorists at the point when extra lanes were being formed, grounding them for at least two hours and having their deflated tires inflated at N1,000 per tire. Within weeks, the word will go round and some sanity will return to the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and other highways.
Two days after the harrowing experience on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, I was to have a worse experience on Friday, September 7th, 2018 when rain-soaked Lagos turned a traffic gridlock nightmare and what should normally be a 30-minute drive from Surulere, Lagos to the Murtala Mohammed International airport took nearly four hours and I missed my flight to US. Several people missed their flights at heavy financial cost to get the flights rescheduled, on account of lawless motorists on the roads and the absence of Lagos State road traffic control officers. Road traffic disorders have led to fatal accidents, emotional trauma to road users and huge financial losses to individuals and companies with the federal and state governments showing morbid unconcern by not sanctioning deficient FRSC and LASTMA officials. It is instructive to read in The Nation newspaper of Wednesday, October 10, 2018 former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s lamentation that he had to abort an engagement in Lagos with Foursquare Gospel Church following a five-hour traffic gridlock on the Abeokuta-Lagos road. Well, if Obasanjo, as President, had made FRSC to be efficient, he wouldn’t be a Wailer today.
I experienced a breath of fresh air in terms road orderliness for the three weeks I was in the US. On Thursday, September 20th I took my granddaughters to Dulles International airport in Washington D.C. for their flight back to Nigeria. There was traffic slow-down on the Washington Beltway (Route 1-495) , due to on-going road repairs, but no motorist ventured into the wide lay-bys on each side of the road. Orderliness of motorists is generally a given in the US. Of course, any infraction is promptly sanctioned by regulatory agencies. Not so in Nigeria. America is a LAW and ORDER country but Nigeria is a LAWLESS and DISORDER nation. I returned to Lagos on October 3, 2018 and it was welcome to traffic horror. We cannot continue in this hellish, disorderly way. It is not a sustainable way to live.
Dr. Olawunmi, former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), is a Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
END
Be the first to comment