We are just wailing every day! We are a captured people! We deserve the government we elected. Don’t we have elected officers from this axis – Councillors, House of Assembly, House of Representatives, Senate and other political appointees? Another election is coming!
The above, copied from a WhatsApp platform – Lagos Ibadan Road Update 3 – is just one among the dozens daily shared on the messaging platform created by motorists on the nation’s busiest corridor – the Lagos – Ibadan expressway. The statement goes beyond merely expressing the anguish daily suffered by Nigerians from the hand of the construction giant, Julius Berger and of course the indifferent federal government; it aptly captures the utter helplessness, the grim alienation by the citizens long condemned to slavish, hellish living.
To describe the experience of the past two months on the inward-Lagos bound journey on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway as nightmarish would be an understatement; slow motion lynching will come close to describe the hell that motorists on Nigeria’s busiest traffic corridor have been subjected. Those Nigerians who thought they had seen the worst in the earlier phase of the construction work may have rejoiced too soon; in fact, many are wondering if indeed Julius Berger hasn’t chosen to save the bitterest of the pill for the last minute with the final phase of barely six kilometres stretch already visiting unequalled trauma on hapless motorists.
Now, a journey from Arepo on the expressway to Alausa Secretariat, which my Google map puts at 11 kilometres, can take anything between three to five hours! And it does not matter whether it is early morning rush or evening-time shuttle. And that is when one gets lucky not to be mugged by those ubiquitous miscreants while stuck on the Warewa Long Bridge!
By the way, the remaining stretch of work, according to Minister of Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola, a mere six kilometres on the Julius Berger end, is expected to end in December – for those still lucky to be alive then!
Months into that final push, the daily experiences remain as diverse as they come. I know a family friend who works in Ikoyi. To get to work by 8 a.m., she has to hit the road by 3.30 am daily. She tells me that she gets back home at about 10.30 pm with barely enough time to catch some sleep before she takes off again on the clock! A young lady who also lives in Arepo, and who just got a job in Lekki could no longer be sure if the high-paying job is a blessing or a curse just after a week-long stress. Once I witnessed a lady, pressed, abandon her car to answer the nature’s call right on the bridge and in full glare of other prying citizens.
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Tales like the above goes beyond exemplifying the chaos unleashed by Julius Berger and its enabler, the federal government; they emblematise the colossal failure of governance as indeed the absence of compassion at its highest levels.
In a country where mismanagement in the broadest sense isn’t just the norm but the directing principle of everyday life and living, it is even pointless to conceive of an evaluation by anyone of the physical and human toll that the latest phase of gridlock has wrought. In any case, who cares for the man-hours lost in a country where national productivity is cheap, textbook stuff? Or the public health correlates more so in a country where death is barely worth a dime?
Certainly not after our government, which for the love of us, has since determined that no costs be it material, physical or even human lives deserves to be spared on the project; same for its partner, Julius Berger. It seems to have taken it for granted that Nigerians would put up with any pain – or even death if it came to that – if only to have a taste of those autobahns for which the Germans are renowned! For that favour, we must thank the government – and Julius Berger – never mind the quantum indeterminable costs already borne!
I have heard countless of times that Julius Berger wouldn’t dare to put the citizens through such trauma in their home country of Germany. The Nation’s columnist, Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan puts it succinctly in a piece on the matter last December.
“Julius Berger”, said the much revered columnist “represents everything that is wrong with the nation. It shares all the negative attributes of the Nigerian governing elite – impunity, insensitivity, greed and lack of empathy for Nigerians they often treat as subjects as against citizen”.
Let me simply state that the statement is true in every material particular. Indeed, it could not have been better put. It is hard to imagine any country in the world, save Nigeria, that would leave a project with such profound impacts on public health/safety and convenience to the whims and caprices of a powerful contractor or service provider. One would ordinarily imagine that a work plan detailing the flow and how the inconveniences to citizens would be mitigated, would be incorporated into the project. And then of course, the government being the enabler of the public good would immediately put its agencies on the alert to mitigate the pains while the provider is kept on its toes. Not in Nigeria.
What do we have here? A company left to do as it pleases while the agencies of government watch pathetically on. And while it can afford to take all the time in the world to carry on its own business, well assured of the sanctity and inviolability of its own contract, other economic actors are supposed to stew in their own juices – including the trillions of naira in losses – incalculable man-hours, in materials and other allied costs that must be borne – underwritten by the same wearied but hapless citizens as collateral costs. Only in Nigeria!
Nigerians are said to be an impatient lot; but then, there is something in the programmed anarchy in the public service delivery that would weary even the owl – a bird renowned for its patience and solitude. In any case, isn’t the programmed anarchy thus enabled that allows our super-citizens the open license to promote their brand of chaos on the highways and from which the lesser citizens have taken their cues? Yes, the cycle is not complete without the blaring of the siren, to alert the rest of us, that the man of power is not just passing through but has an urgent assignment which must involve driving against the flow of traffic. And then of course the police and sundry traffic officials making of hay of the extortion business as Nigerians roast.
Again, isn’t that how we roll?