THAT LOKOJA ABUJA ROAD

THAT LOKOJA-ABUJA ROAD

I spent the last Yuletide in my Edo North country home, Igarra. After the Yuletide, I had business to do in Abuja and I left home on Sunday, January 4, 2009 for Abuja. Transport was expensive and it took all day to get one from Ibillo to Abuja. "Agberos" (self-styled transporters) will not let anyone move until they have extorted as much money as they could. All these, despite the declaration to the contrary by Adams Oshiomole, the comrade Governor of Edo State.

At some point, someone whose car was damaged in the process went to the police at Ibillo. What did the police do? They came and promptly took the car to the police station with the "Agberos" in tow boasting that they work hand-in-hand with the men in black and that nothing would happen. We finally moved after several hours, and on getting to Lokoja, it was a different kettle of fish entirely. We ran into one of the worst traffic snarls I had ever seen. In a usual manner, our driver veered off the highway to go through the town, which supposedly should be faster. We eventually spent three hours to get out of Lokoja and what I saw in those three hours makes me fret for the future of this country.

There were all sorts of miscreants along the way either fighting or blocking lanes to extort money. I made it a point of duty to count and I counted over a thousand young men who had nothing to do but stay on the road all day fomenting one kind of trouble or the other. Whilst this lasted, I did not see a single security officer trying to keep the peace. For God's sake, where is the place of the law and its enforcement agents in this country? If only records were available, the illegal toll collected on the road in this country will amount to billions of naira every year. Can anyone hazard a guess, what these young men will do in the years to come when they can no longer live on the road?

As if this was not trouble enough, a few metres away from Abaji, we ran into a burning tanker loaded to the hilt with petroleum product. Our vehicle and others had to beat a retreat and another long wait and chaos ensued. Pray, what self-respecting nation still transport's petroleum products by road when there are now special rails designed for that purpose? I continued to ponder these questions when it suddenly dawned on me that the contract for the dualisation of the Lokoja-Abuja highway on which Senator A. T Ahmed and several less-privileged Nigerians met their sorrowful but avoidable deaths had actually long been awarded to a consortium of contractors and that work had stopped completely after fitful starts. Will anyone tell Nigerians why that road has not been built and apologise to all those who spent so much time on the road that day and every other day on almost all roads imaginable across the country.

If that road was built by now, the traffic snarl at Lokoja could have been avoided. If there were two lanes, the burning tanker would not have posed as much threat as it did and the chaos might not have ensued. When I sprawled on a bed that was a welcome relief in Abuja at about 10:30 p.m. on that eventful day, I could not help but marvel at how a three hours journey I started at 10:00 am took all day and yet in a nation that harbours the economic pretensions of being one of the biggest 20 by 2020.


STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.