Traveller, you must set out/ At dawn,” counselled Wole Soyinka, poet and Nobel laureate, “And wipe your feet upon/ the dog-nose wetness of the earth.”
Though the protagonist in the poem, ‘Death in the Dawn’ died in a tragic crash, a cruel irony of technology consuming its own creator, the message was clear: set out early and you should reach your destination in time.
In the Lagos traffic of latter days, however, such commonsense logic would appear to have vamoosed. You may set out early or late; but you must arrive late — very late. That is why you must not only vigorously pray before leaving your office at the close of work, fasting — dry fasting too — might not be a bad idea!
Hardball is guilty of arrant exaggeration, right? Just wait.
On November 3, two colleagues left The Nation’s Matori, Mushin, Lagos head office, after work. One, a female, left around 8pm. The other, a male, left around 10pm. The destination of both: Journalists Estate, at Arepo, which though in Ogun State, is on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. If you discount the normal Lagos metropolitan traffic, that trip should last less than one hour.
But on this day? The one that left at 8pm reached her house at about 2:10 am — solid six hours later. If she was flying to London from Lagos, she probably would be touching down at Heathrow!
And the one that left at 10? Marginally luckier — but just: he got home at about 3am, another solid five hours! If he was travelling to Accra, Ghana from Lagos, he would have touched down at Kotoka International Airport, at 10:45 and hit his hotel, latest by 11:30. By 3am, he would have had no less than three hours of sound and sweet sleep! Yet, here he was, sweating it out on a jammed road, in a dark night, in the midst of a swearing, angry and cursing stranded co-commuters, in the middle of nowhere!
You still feel one doesn’t need prayers and fasting to commute to his house, after another hard day’s work?
But what is it with our country — does Nigeria have so much time to burn on nothingness? Why didn’t somebody somewhere monitor things and take prompt action before they fester beyond measure and inflict on people needless pains?
The gridlock is said to have been caused by some bad parts on the ever-busy expressway. But then, the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) have their road camps all over the place. Didn’t their engineers spot a minor rupture on that road, grow into a pothole and extend into a crater, so much so that a three-lane traffic now contracts into a bottle-neck of one, causing that hideous traffic snarl? Must citizens suffer and die (yes, die: because the stress these avoidable gridlocks inflict could cause some citizens fatal ailments) before the authorities act?
That portion of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway falls within Ogun territory. But even all over Lagos, bad roads abound. Just after the NAFDAC Lagos office at Oshodi, heading towards Agege Motor Road, is a crater from which many articulated trucks and tankers have stumbled. Yet, that crater gapes as wide as ever, like some wide-mouthed malevolent god, waiting to swallow its latest victim!
How long will citizens continue to endure such avoidable pains? Someone, somewhere must sit up — and fast!
