Category: Sunday

It is now more than a century since vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine were introduced to Nigeria. They are now found in every nook and cranny of the land stitching the country together even as they dictate the pace of the economy in every way conceivable. They do these and more in such a way that without them one cannot imagine any form of sustainable social intercourse going on within the country.

In all the time that they have been in operation here however, it is doubtful if Nigerians have really come to terms with the mechanics of this invention, perhaps the most characteristic invention of the twentieth century. The internal combustion engine is totally mechanical. At the heart of this contraption, you have a closed compartment within which a mixture of air and volatile fumes created by a jet of petrol are ignited by a spark leading to a combustible event which in turn  leads to the release of a great deal of energy. This is then channelled to the wheels causing them to turn and the vehicle to move. Ordinarily, it is difficult to ascribe any spiritual dimension to this phenomenon but I am afraid that there is incontrovertible evidence that all those who earn their living working on any aspect of motor transportation in Nigeria are convinced that the internal combustion engine derives its demonstrably awesome power from a collection of powerful spiritual forces which will bestow their favour only after appropriate propitiation from those that use it. It is the implicit belief of transport workers of all hews that they are no more than agents of these spirits which as all spirits go are as capricious as the wind; useful but totally uncontrollable by the uninitiated. They strive to give the impression that in ministering to their machines, they are performing some rites which involve some form of communication with the spirits which rule the engine.

Given the inability of mere mortals to direct the affairs of unseen spirits, it is not surprising that the supervising god of this portion of human endeavour, at least in my neck of the woods, has been identified as Ogun, mighty in all his ascribed turbulence. Ogun is recognised as the patron of all those who work with metals, especially iron or steel from which all parts of any vehicle is crafted. It also befits his role as the maker of roads to be responsible for the welfare of those whose livelihood is wrung from their activity on any stretch of road. To venture forth on any road therefore, at least in the imagination of all those who work in and around vehicles, you need the favour of Ogun more than the fitness of your vehicle or the skill of your driver. It is however no longer fashionable to offer prayers directly to Ogun, although hard core transport workers are very active participants in Ogun festivals and regard themselves as devotees of the god. The same thing goes for all those who travel in motor vehicles because even as the lips of travelers are offering prayers to more modern deities, their heart is full of supplication to Ogun. At the base of such prayers is the wish that the traveler does not set out on a journey on any day that the road is hungry for a taste of human blood. The road in this case fits the description of Ogun’s much vaunted preference for blood over water. In this case, obedience to the will of the God is superior to all the efforts made to put the vehicle in which the journey is to be undertaken in serviceable condition. For a safe journey there are not many who would leave home without saying the appropriate prayers for traveling mercies. Given this background, it is not surprising that in the good old days of petrol scarcity, there were testimonies from some powerful pastors who announced to their enchanted congregation that with prayers to their personal God, they were able to drive their vehicle over vast distances without a drop of petrol in their tank thereby disobeying, with divine help it must be said, all the laws of physics and thermodynamics. The internal combustion engine has therefore been domesticated and incorporated into folk lore in a way that is peculiarly ours but hardly helpful to the cause of safety on our roads.

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For all the mystery attached to motor transport, it is easy to forget that the activities associated with it gives a form of livelihood to the largest group of Nigerians but for those involved in working on the farms. Drivers, mechanics, electricians, so called vulcanisers, panel beaters, painters, upholsters and the ubiquitous agbero all make it possible for our chaotic transport system to function after a fashion. Each person that works within the system belongs to a union which is led by officials who rule their chiefdoms with a heavy hand, maintaining their own brand of discipline through the use of gangs of young men with a predilection for violence of the extreme kind. And yet the guiding principle within these unions is democracy. Just like the country, they hold periodic elections with rival groups fighting it out, not in terms of winning votes but of inflicting more physical damage to people in other groups than it is inflicted on the winning group. These contests take place at local, state and federal governt levels with the winners at each level forming an alternative government to those at local government and other levels. Some of the state union chairmen are comrades in arms with their respective governors and go about their business in government issued official cars. This must be so because there are governors who owe their exalted  positions to the patronage of the chairman of theit state motor transport union. This cannot be otherwise because all political parties have their shock troops who are recruited from the motor boys who love nothing more than raising hell and are always ready to go to war as long as their price is met. Their loyalty is never on the basis of ideology or some strongly held belief. It goes to whoever pays the highest price.

Right from the beginning, all those who chose to work in the transport system have been young men with attitude. They have always been drawn from the very bottom of the social pool. And yet, we have all this time given them the responsibility of driving all the vehicles which are supposed to take us safely from place to place. Ordinarily, not many of them are able to make enough money over a long period of time, to buy a vehicle of their own. And, for those of them that eventually manage to do so, it is almost invariably an investment to keep body and soul together in the form of a retirement benefit. Our roads have been surrendered to a large group of people whose only reason for being on the road at any time of day or night is to make as much money as possible within the shortest time possible. Given that premise, it is clear that safety considerations rank very low on the priority list of the majority of those who take to our highways each and every day. This being the case, most Nigerians have no choice but to set out on journeys on nothing more substantial than hope and a fervent prayer.

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!