Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s five-month old government has in recent weeks come under tremendous pressure. Critics and columnists hold him responsible for what they describe as the grounding of Lagos. Roads are broken, the critics point out, robbers and cultists are running rampage day and night, traffic has become so snarled that nothing seems to be moving, and in general nothing seems to be working. They hold the governor responsible for the problems, in particular, for not sustaining the momentum of his predecessors and for advocating, among other panaceas, a civilised and modern method of traffic law enforcement. For commercial bus drivers who brutishly and defiantly flout traffic rules, the critics sneered that no civilised method could constrain them.
The observations are fairly incontrovertible, and the circumstances they describe can’t be denied. There are problems with many roads, and traffic is truly snarled in many areas . In addition, robbers are running riot, whether in Ikorodu or Festac Town, or yet other areas, some of them unreported. The problem, however, is appreciating the factors responsible for the seeming breakdown. Nearly all the analyses and editorials suggest Governor Ambode is either not doing enough to arrest the drift or he is applying the wrong remedies, some of them too civilised for the brutes they are meant to control.
Take traffic snarls for example. Soon after Governor Ambode turned his attention to the traffic pains afflicting Lagos, he ordered the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to humanise and civilise their enforcement methods. Rather than engage in high-speed chase along Lagos’ densely populated streets, or arrest and impound vehicles thereby clogging their premises, he directed them to modernise their methods. This order was interpreted to mean that no arrests whatsoever were to be countenanced by LASTMA, thus giving free rein to homicidal Danfo Bus drivers and other errant car owners, some of them military men.
Governor Ambode may have accepted blame for the traffic madness afflicting the city state, for he is after all the governor. And he may have cleverly and desperately reversed himself. If indeed he has, he ought not to. And if he has not, he should stay the course. What is wrong is not the civilised method of law enforcement which he ordered, for that is the path to toe, but the imagination, capacity and efficiency of the government agencies saddled with the responsibility of keeping traffic flowing. The previous methods of traffic law enforcement were not only unsuitable, though they are countrywide and appeared to achieve results, they gave Nigerians a bad name globally. Governor Ambode was right in his appreciation of the problem, and he was even more sensible in the solutions he proffered. All that remained were for his team to persevere and courageously stay the course, fine-tune the panaceas, and work extra hours to enforce obedience along the modern, civilised lines he had identified.
When critics and editorial writers suggest that the governor’s panaceas were too civilised and modern for the calibre of commercial bus drivers plying Lagos roads, they insult the black race and discountenance a rigorous analysis of the problem. Commercial bus drivers, who are mostly blamed for the traffic snarls, can be tamed intelligently without resorting to the brutal methods of the past. If Governor Ambode has reversed himself, let him at least recognise that in the near future, he will still have to revisit the modern methods he tried to unfold. He must recognise that the old methods of doing things, which the public seems to be enamoured of and are advocating, have limited utility. It is, after all, not working in policing;, Boko Haram war, and nearly in every other thing, including traffic chaos. Nigeria’s law enforcement methods are hopelessly antiquated.
It is even more disturbing that Governor Ambode is blamed almost wholly for what appears like a resurgence of crime in Lagos. Admittedly, as governor, he has little choice but to accept blame, and he must find a way round what is building into a crisis of confidence in Lagos. But it is strange that analysts fail to accurately and fully appreciate the whole ramification of the crisis, especially the political economy of crime. Curbing crime is not just a question of policing or more patrol vehicles and superior firepower. Crime has its own violent logic. The national economy is virtually in the doldrums, with Lagos bearing a disproportionate share of the fallout. Migration into Lagos is at an all-time high, a high percentage of which is unemployed. Patrol cars and more guns will not curb the problem. For instance, Lagos ought more appropriately to be allocated funds for more than 57 local governments, equal to or even more than Kano and Jigawa combined, but it gets funds for just 24. Lagos is overwhelmed and bursting at the seams. Analysts should be putting pressure on the central government to succour Lagos very urgently.
Cult wars and robberies predate the Ambode government, as newspaper reports throughout last year indicated very clearly. In addition, the federal government has become more, not less, irresponsible in both the quantity and quality of law enforcement. The police are badly trained, badly kitted, badly motivated and hopelessly underfunded and outnumbered. It is, therefore, necessary to encourage a holistic appreciation of the crime situation in Lagos and the measures needed to combat it. Governor Ambode of course needs to worry when Lagosians cannot sleep. He has an obligation to articulate the problem and work hard, notwithstanding the inclement economic environment, to stanch the flow of blood on Lagos streets. He will doubtless need to plot a way out of the commercial motorcycle menace suffocating Lagos. And he must look for ingenious methods of curbing traffic robberies and restoring order to the streets. But he must not panic, get desperate, or succumb to the short term and impracticable measures many people are advocating.
Rather than condemnation, commentators must show more rigour in analysing the problems confronting Lagos State and its government. A reworked revenue allocation formula, state policing, and sound national economic policies conducing to even and countrywide spread of development would be a great advantage to take pressure off Lagos. For no matter how brilliantly Gov Ambode tackles the multiple menaces confronting Lagos, it will only make the state a magnet for every drifter and dispossessed from other parts of the country, thus reenacting and reinforcing the original problem confronting the state and rendering the solutions either short-lived or ineffective. There is a limit to what Lagos can do in the face of rising population; there is a limit to how many unemployed youths Lagos can put to work in the face of irresponsible national economic policies and poor governance in other states; and there is a limit to what Lagos can do when the federal government implacably controls the levers of security, takes a lion’s share of revenue, and is unable to control migration into the few prosperous and obviously now encumbered states like Lagos.
