Published consistently since September 1843, The Economist magazine wields enormous power, influence and professional respectability. Its longevity and prestige also serve as a deceptive veneer, many times, over the publication’s unwarranted intellectual arrogance, jaundiced judgements, ideological extremism and often embarrassingly shoddy journalistic practice. The Economist’s shortcomings in this regard were in graphic display, once again, in its latest edition ((November 7th – 13th) where it features an article on Urban Traffic in Lagos titled ‘Paralysed: Why Nigeria’s largest city is even less navigable than usual’.
The article begins with a clear understanding and awareness of the challenges of traffic management in Lagos even at the best of times. In its words “Traffic is a way of life in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city. Home by some counts to over 20m people, it is among the most notoriously congested places in the world. The “go-slow” piles up long before dawn as businessmen in SUVS and traders in battered buses hit the overburdened roads. It lasts until well after dark. Often the queues can be unfathomable: a rainstorm, a breakdown or a public holiday can condemn a driver to hours in horn-honking hell. Tardy workers proffer one irrefutable excuse: “Traffic is bad”.
As far as The Economist is concerned, the worsening of traffic gridlocks in Lagos and the attendant robbery of vehicles stuck in traffic in recent weeks can only be blamed on what it perceives as the weakness and incompetence of the new governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode’s administration compared to the higher efficiency and effectiveness of the preceding administration of Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN). According to the magazine, “The state’s former governor, Babatunde Fashola, who left office in March, was lauded for improving traffic and security. He curbed dangerous motorbike taxis and brought local “area boys” (street children) under control. Cars were terrified into order by a state traffic agency, LASTMA, whose bribe-hungry officers flagged down offending drivers”.
The Economist does grave damage to Mr Fashola’s hard earned respectable image and reputation by suggesting that the former governor and now federal minister encouraged or condoned the use of terror, intimidation and corrupt extortion by LASTMA to enforce traffic order and sanity in Lagos. If The Economist does not believe that Nigerians are inferior human beings no better than beasts, it would not have so brazenly sanctioned such barbaric and primitive methods to maintain traffic sanity and security in Lagos. Would The Economist magazine have written in such glowing endorsement of such brutishness by any public agency in the advanced western countries?
Mr Ambode’s crime that makes his administration culpable for the traffic conundrum in the mega city with the attendant negative security spin offs, to The Economist, is his determination to curb the excesses of LASTMA and ensure more civilised and dignified methods of traffic control and management in the state. As the magazine puts it, “…Akinwumi Ambode, is full of excuses, but few solutions, for the worsening gridlock…Yet the root of the problem is in policy: Mr Ambode cut the powers of traffic controllers by banning them from impounding cars. In retaliation, officers have refused to enforce the rules”.
The import of this strange piece of illogic on the part of The Economist is that Mr Ambode must helplessly allow LASTMA to continue on its path of corruption and impunity because, as the magazine puts it, “Reform in a culture riddled with corruption is never easy”. As I noted earlier, this kind of reasoning is grossly unfair to Mr Fashola who, incidentally, has just received an eminently deserved award by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a worldwide conflict prevention organisation, “for his commitment to resolving social, economic and security challenges in one of the world’s most challenging urban environments”.
If disgruntled traffic officers are deliberately sabotaging Ambode’s operational reforms by compounding the state’s traffic woes for selfish pecuniary reasons, as The Economist insinuates, the solution cannot be for the governor to capitulate and allow the continued reign of arbitrariness and impunity. We must never as a people become mentally enslaved to the widely held and dangerously disempowering notion that we are inherently incapable of running our lives in accordance with the highest civilised standards. While no one can credibly deny the fact that Fashola built with passion, commitment and brilliance on the socio-economic and infrastructural foundation he inherited from his predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the truth is also that the excesses of agencies like LASTMA alienated his administration from a broad cross section of the grassroots populace.
This was evident in the surprisingly narrow margin with which the APC defeated the PDP in the last governorship election in Lagos State in spite of Fashola’s superlative performance. Of course, this column does not discount the influence on the polls of Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s divisive ethno-religious politics in Lagos as elsewhere and the impact of a PDP campaign awash with slush funds. However, no one can blame Ambode for wanting to quickly reconnect governance in the state to the grassroots by, for example, giving traffic enforcement a human face. As the governor’s riot act to Okada riders and commercial drivers this week demonstrates, he knows that he cannot afford to be perceived as being soft on law-enforcement.
Even then, the fact that drivers and motor bike riders saw the governor’s desire for greater civility in law enforcement as an opportunity for a return to lawlessness shows that there is still a great deal of work to be done in the direction of positive and voluntary behavioural change in Lagos. As Chinua Achebe said in his book, ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’, discipline is nothing if it is not, first and foremost, self-discipline. The Tinubu administration created outfits like the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) to enforce environmental laws while re-organising and re-equipping the anti-crime squad inherited from Brigadier-General Marwa, ‘ Operation Sweep’ into the current ‘Rapid Response Squad’.
Indeed, Tinubu’s government introduced such draconian measures as imposing a N50,000 fine on vehicles driving against traffic as well as requiring that offending drivers undergo psychiatric tests to determine their state of mental health. These measures attracted vehement denunciations from the political opposition and sections of the populace. Fashola stringently and rightly enforced the ban on okadas from major highways, strengthened LASTMA and initiated the Security Trust Fund, which significantly enhanced the capacity of the state to equip and motivate the police to fight crime in the state more effectively.
Ambode has also, within a very short period taken steps to further strengthen all these law enforcement agencies even while striving to civilize and sanitise their methods. Yes, effective law enforcement is key and imperative. But equally critical is the need for Ambode and his communication team in particular to come up with creative strategies to help achieve positive, responsible, voluntary and thus sustainable behavioural change among a critical mass of the populace.
The Economist magazine’s report also creates the impression that criminals have suddenly invaded the state in recent times due to the alleged weakness (whatever that means) of the Ambode administration. In truth, the problem is more complex than that. The Fashola administration has been rightly commended for its aggressive beautification of open spaces and clearance of slums in different parts of the state. Thus, while highly visible areas of the state like Oshodi, Apapa, Surulere, Ikeja, Ikoyi, Ikorodu road, Obalande, Lekki or Victoria Island among others were made aesthetically appealing to the sophisticated elite including foreigners and tourists, hundreds of poor, derelict, vagrant and vulnerable members of the populace were pushed deeper into the margins of society where, for all practical purposes, they became invisible.
A number of them were from time to time deported from Lagos to their home states – a measure which did not stem the daily steady flow of a stream of desperate economic migrants into the state in search of economic succour. These marginalised elements only seized the opportunity of the transition from one administration to another to resurface and register their continued presence and pitiable plight in the country’s model mega city through crime. Of course, they must be vigorously checked but an enduring solution requires greater depth of thought.
In his contribution to the magisterial book, ‘Mega-City Growth and the Future’, edited by a group of scholars, Yok-shiu F. Lee makes the pertinent point that “Despite the pressures created by rapid urban population growth, most third world governments have given relatively low priority during the last three decades to the provision of appropriate, affordable housing and infrastructure for their urban populations, particularly the poorer households. The result is that the majority of urban residents have no alternative but to live in self-built settlements or in dilapidated tenements”. And for many of those in this category, a life of crime is the only option for survival within the context of protracted economic crisis, chronic unemployment, pervasive poverty and criminal inequality.
Not only must governor Ambode ensure that social justice and equity become the cornerstone of his socio-economic policies but the APC government now in control at the centre must bring an urgent end to the continued marginalisation and unjust treatment of Lagos in the political economy of Nigeria – a situation that makes it impossible for the state to live up to its responsibilities as the country’s economic and commercial capital.
