By Adekunle Adekoya
Three years ago, on December 20, 2019, to be exact, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, Minister of State for Health, had reason to leave Lagos on January 20, 2019, to deliver a lecture at an event in Abeokuta. According to him, he got trapped in a traffic jam on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and ended up spending five hours on the journey, normally a breezy trip of about one hour. When Mamora arrived at the event, it was almost over, as most of the other guests, including former President General Olusegun Obasanjo, had arrived, played their roles, and left.
The minister, apologising to his hosts, said: “I want to apologise for my lateness. I left Lagos early enough. I ended up spending five hours for a one-hour journey. We got ‘hooked up’ with Magodo. The journey that should have taken us one hour, took us five hours. That is the unpalatable state of our roads, even my pilot car could not pilot me through the ordeal.”
That was three years ago, and last Wednesday, the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola was on television, speaking about on-going road works in the country. Of course, there was no shying away from the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, on which fellow Nigerians suffer untold deprivation daily as a result of the massive, unending gridlock occasioned by ongoing reconstruction works.
Among other things, Fashola said: “The construction site on a highway is a very difficult thing to manage, so you have to cut, divert, build and reopen. Those are the challenges, but we will get there. It’s a bitter pill for a better life.” He also noted that side roads that feed the major roads are either state or local government roads.
In making that observation, Minister Fashola, discreetly blamed the system for our transportation woes. Many of the roads that feed the major arteries are in very bad shape; some are even unmotorable. We seem to have developed a habit of abandoning some roads as soon as we develop alternatives.
For instance, people came into Lagos from other parts of the country through the old road that passes through Sagamu, Ogijo, and Ikorodu, or from Ijebu-Ode through Itoikin, also through Ikorodu to Lagos. As soon as Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was completed, those roads were abandoned and left to sink into disrepair until recent repair works on the Sagamu-Ogijo-Ikorodu road. Itoikin’s is still on the way.
If these two roads had remained motorable, our people would not have suffered so much as a result of repair works on the Lagos-Ibadan road; they remain viable alternatives. In fact, they could also be dualized for greater value. Inside Lagos City itself, similar roads have been abandoned. One such is Old Ojo Road, which was the link road that fell off the radar when Lagos-Badagry Expressway became the new bride.
Now, Old Ojo Road is in disrepair, with many sections virtually unmotorable, while Lagos-Badagry Expressway itself has been under reconstruction for about a decade now. Only residents of communities like Satellite Town, Agboju, Abuke-Ado, Alakija, Ojo, Iba, Okokomaiko, and others can tell of the anguish experienced daily as they pursue daily activities. If the major arteries are in disrepair, the feeder roads ought not to be, and this is where the state governments have been remiss in their responsibilities to their people.
Fashola did not explicitly state that states and local governments are to blame. Given the present system perfected by state governors, which have ensured that local governments remain as useless as possible, it is difficult to seek to blame them. Before, as I said earlier in this column, local governments built “Trunk C” roads.
But if their funds are trapped in the joint state and local government account, and the chairman of a local government has been made to sign a paper that he received his LG’s allocation as Buhari alleged, what can local governments do? In all of these, people are suffering. Criminals among us are also taking advantage of the unending gridlock as they attack stranded motorists, robbing them of their valuables. Those who are not robbed are lucky, but often their vehicles overheat in the jam and their situation is worsened on all sides.
Let us remember that the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway has been under reconstruction for the best part of 22 years, beginning with the Obasanjo administration, which started the repair works in 2000, yet the repairs are not complete. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway may enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the road that took the longest to repair.
Do we know what this says of us as a nation? Do the people who call the shots from Abuja, irrespective of which party is in power, know what this says about them? I should cringe at being part of a team that cannot repair a 180-km road in more than 20 years; I really shudder at the prospect.
Of course, there are reasons for that state of affairs, but they are excuses for failure. It is also why every other aspect of national life is in shambles, such that the university system is wrecked by strikes, healthcare is hobbled by brain drain, and our national life chokes on our inability to refine our crude locally. Even the gasoline we import is inefficiently distributed, resulting in scarcity. What a country! Have a merry Christmas, if you can.
*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues
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