When the British arrived in what is now Nigeria in the closing years of the nineteenth century, they came with a clear mission; to extract from their colony, the raw materials with which to feed their industries and export them back home at minimum cost. In order to fulfil their mission, they immediately began to build the roads along which the raw materials they had extracted were to reach the ports for onward shipment to Britain. One of the first steps taken to consolidate their hold on the new colony was to straighten and widen as much as they could, the old footpaths which existed in all parts of their newly acquired territory. They were quite successful in this enterprise especially since it was complemented with the railways, the construction of which began at the same time as the roads. This made sense as it was the railways which at first did all the heavy lifting as the previous means of moving produce on the roads was by human porterage and the odd camel or donkey.
By 1926, the existing roads had become inadequate, especially because motorised vehicles had become available and needed asphalted roads on which to move efficiently. The colonial government therefore took the decision to build what they described as Trunk A roads throughout the colony. They might have been grandly described as Trunk roads but in reality they were narrow, winding and quite dangerous in parts but they did the job for which they were designed and evacuated produce from the points of production to railway stations and the ports for onward transmission to Britain. It is funny that these roads were in no way comparable to the magnificent roads with which the Romans criss-crossed their vast empire more than two millennia before, some which are still in use today. Some of these roads were built in Britain but our colonial masters did not seem to have seen the remnants of the old Roman roads as a template for the roads which they were building in their own colonies. It has to be said for all it is worth however that the Trunk A roads were carefully maintained by the Public Works Department (PWD) which kept them free of potholes. For this purpose, the PWD had work camps all along the Trunk A roads as these roads acquired a life of their own, as with their use, a sort of culture developed along the roads and was sustained by the people who had seen the utility value of the roads as they were being built. For example, the roads were quite long and journeys along them could stretch over a couple of days and more. On the Western Trunk A road which passed through developed urban centres, it stretched from Asaba all the way to Lagos and passed through relatively big and long established towns all along the way. Benin, Owo, Akure, Ilesa, Ife, Ibadan, Sagamu, Ikorodu before reaching Lagos. A culture which was associated with the road, grew in all those towns and made them memorable to all those who at one time or the other, travelled along it. As far as I know, the importance of that road to Ilesa, where I now live, is shown by the observation that its commercial importance was drastically reduced when Lagos bound traffic was diverted to the Benin – Ore road shortly after independence. The Trunk A roads of those days were tarred but virtually all other roads were left to the mercies of rain, wind and sunshine. The vehicles which plied those roads together with their passengers were invariably covered in a fine but tenacious coat of dust such that your journey was not truly over until they had taken a bath to wash off the effects of their journey. The use of some of those designated Trunk B and C roads were actually quite seasonal and they were hardly kept in a state of repair. Even today, those early colonial roads still exist but are now recognised as Federal roads (Trunk A), State roads (Trunk B) and Local government roads (Trunk C).
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Although the new roads were primarily designed to move agricultural produce, the period of the building of those Trunk A and others led to the development of passenger transport which may, or may not have been factored into the plans which led to the building of those roads in the first place. After all, passenger transport did not contribute to the movement of cocoa or palm oil to the ports. It was soon clear however that there was the need for passenger traffic if the usefulness of the road was to be sustained. This aspect of road development was left to local entrepreneurs who began to build fleets of lorries which moved both freight and passengers, some of them over vast distances. Although those lorries were no more sophisticated than motorised wooden boxes, each of them represented a very substantial investment and enormous prestige for the owners. Nothing represented wealth more glaringly than a lorry which carried the name of the owner or owners as the case may be over vast distances or even within a defined locality. Furthermore, it was also not practicable to put a solitary vehicle on the road as any need of any but the most trivial repair could take the lorry out of commission for long periods of time. Consequently, any transporter worth his salt needed to maintain a fleet of vehicles. This dictated the formation of partnerships of varied longevity because it was soon discovered that joint ownership of vehicles was a tricky business indeed. The giant of motor transport in those days was Armels Transport, not surprisingly, a company whose origin is shrouded in mystery but which at a certain point in time dominated the Nigerian transport sector to the virtual exclusion of any other transport company. Many companies dealing with the transport of
goods and passengers all over Nigeria have emerged since then but no other transport company has stirred the imagination quite like the Armels Transport of my early years. The company operated on a schedule which was adhered to come rain or shine and you could send anything to anywhere through Armels. There are still a few toothless oldies around who remember as children, being sent safely and punctually to far destinations through Armels. The company which had its origin in Benin City was involved in the transport of goods and passengers. It was so trusted that it was a dedicated mail carrier on contract to the colonial government. It also carried passengers in perceptibly greater comfort and safety than her competitors and was consequently heavily patronised by the emerging middle class. The company was bought over by the Midwest government in 1971 and has since been swallowed up in the morass of the Nigerian business environment.
Another example of a transporter of that era was Ojukwu Transport, an enterprise which was begun with one second hand lorry in 1930 but had grown to a fleet in excess of two hundred only twenty years later. The company concentrated on ferrying goods, mainly on government contract, from the East to Lagos. Although it was founded in Nnewi, its headquarters was and indeed is still in Lagos even though you are never likely to see a vehicle with Ojukwu Transport stenciled on its side. The company appears to have been swallowed by history and there are not many people who have memories of travelling by Ojukwu Transport as it was mainly involved in carrying goods on behalf of the colonial government. Her heydays were the war years when it provided lucrative transport services to the British Army, a service for which its proprietor was not only handsomely paid but was also decorated with a knighthood by the grateful owners of the now defunct British Empire. The days of hauling raw materials from the East to the ports are now firmly in the past as the country has transformed from a producer of agricultural raw materials to the collection of rent from our troubled oil fields. All in all, it appears that nothing lasts forever!
