The Mental States and the Nigerian Roads

I am particularly wondering what kind of transportation system and policies we are building and we are accepting as law and custom in Nigeria. I believe Nigerians will begin to assume that Churning Spades and Spinning Yarns is about to discuss the usual things. Bad Roads! Police collecting bribes at their unauthorized makeshift check points and road safety only brushing through the essential things that are needed for road worthiness to the issue of bribes. Those things are now part of us, in fact the Nigerian mental state do not challenge these things. At first it was a mere murmur after the commercial bus or truck moves away from the man that holds a gun or wears a uniform. I have decided to agree with Chuma Nwokolo who told his audience in his Book Campaign, Ghost of Pharoah’s Past that we are victims of Post-autocratic stress and that is why we have refused to challenge these things and have become extremely complacent. These are issues that are supposed to handled by a newspaper. I remember a journey of mine, from Lagos, Nigeria’s major sea port state and commercial capital to Ibadan, one of Nigeria’s principal cultural, literary and historical hubs. Trust that we met several members of the Nigerian Police from different divisions who were confident of their crimes. Some Crime fighting Police divisions have also joined the fray of not watching out for thieves but for making the car as a small safe for the rumpled naira. These are overflogged issues that needs to be flogged until something changes. But how can it change in a grand, well connected conspiracy of underfunding the police, corruption in high places and insincerity of government-Including the present Jonathan government. Something is wrong with the brains of the Nigerian Police and other uniformed authorities. They have abandoned their main purpose of safeguarding lives, ensuring road safety to manhandling the same citizens they are supposed to protect. When you pass through the major roads in Nigeria, especially the ones located in the eastern and western regions, you will begin to wonder whether the state governments, the federal government and even the people are not suffering from a state of displaced brains. These are the same roads that lead to boarding schools, to universities, to villages and hometowns-to religious conventions and business meetings and family. One day, I decided to travel to the land of culture and history by road-the trains are just coming around after it was jeopardized by some business mogul who wanted something else but trains. I saw a ghastly motor accident that could ultimatetly be avoided. A bus of 15 people had somersaulted several times and had left the road to a ditch. Some of the victims were easily flung from the windows to the floor. There were brains smashed and there was a pregnant woman right there on the floor, her stomach opened up like some potato sauce-It was disgusting. There was a young woman too there that was spared, she was dancing and playing her violin in a mad fashion. I bet she was going to her religious convention when it occurred and that’s a miracle. Someone needs to check her for internal bleeding, I don’t think she’s free from all these, until a doctor says so. I think she will need to sell her violin to get to her church, her home or an hospital. Something is happening to her brain, just like the rest of us. Nigerians are a living miracle of survival amidst things that have gone so bad. I wept!

I cried that day not because of my “christainese”upbringing like my creative partner and writer described me but because all these could have been avoided in Lagos- Ibadan express road. The road could have been managed or allowed to be constructed instead of the usual corruption and lobbying on the corpses of ordinary Nigerians. The Benin-Ore road sure remains the same so thieves can come and threaten the lives of ordinary Nigerians-as if there is no government in this post-colonial jungle! Our roads connects us to the uncertainty of destination, the uncertain gallops of quick and monstrous deaths . We are constantly testing our lives as testimonies and our fears are ripe for consumption. Our government is more or less in coma to issues that are pivotal to development but are quick to further enrich themselves with policies like the Fuel Subsidy Removal and the exponential salaries and allowances from crude oil money. Life itself is constantly on trial here,It is a cunt of a country. There is no war but you have to pray against stray bullets, police, thugs , armed robbers, terrorists and agitators who are ready to make life beautifully difficult, nasty, brutish and short. The accident I just narrated is not fiction. It’s commonplace. Trucks smash cars containing a whole family, Accidents beautifully orchestrated in Nigeria by bumps, narrow expressways, and landscape problems that Hollywood is so fake when they comes up with somersaulting cars and burnt vehicles. And government-There is no government as far as I am concerned, just a bunch of fat cats licking the pot and snatching the chunks of the national cake from themselves in the name of political parties. The Tribalised Brain on the Road You will know a Yoruba bus when you get into one. Everyone is trying to prove being educated but are overtly rent in uncoordinated discussions. They are rebels when nobody is looking but are as quiet as a tissue paper blown by the breeze in the presence of authorities. I think over the years and after the Wetie days of Awolowo, The trauma of Abiola’s dashed presidency, The NADECO strategic fight for a resultant disgraceful democracy and the disappointment of Olusegun Obasanjo amongst others, who have come to embrace them as saviours but have stabbed their aspirations in the back-There is nothing worth fighting for, or dying for after all. So much talk, so little action. So when there’s so much talk on the bus you board, majority of them are Yorubas. When a policeman stops the Yorubaman’s bus, he doesn’t allow for long discussions on licenses and approval, he gives “Esu” whatever he wants. If he tries to be a little different, he is shouted at by his passengers that he is wasting time. Yoruba’s now see demanding for your rights as youthful exuberance. They have come of age as a nation, there is absolutely nothing worth fighting for-is there? If you ask me what I feel about road development in Nigeria, I will reply with all boldness that development in Nigeria is heavily tribalised and politicized in all ramifications and implications of the word. There is no equal socio-economic ambience and development in some areas are just a way to placate them for votes, for peace. We a country of tribes looking for a prey tribe to prey on and that has been how we have been able to “progress” retrogressively for the past 50 years. Apart from these, I will also agree with socio-economic analysts who claim that the country’s development is restricted to benefit the rich and government officials. So road construction is based on where the rich men live, work and drink-and go to art events like the one my team organizes every month. If you are conversant with the Lagos Metropolis, you will realize that Lagos Island has the best roads in Lagos. The Island houses some of the biggest corporations, the embassies and the delectable political, economic and sexual inclined prostitutes who have upped their ante. It is the place where our colonial master’s offspring spring up another colonial proposal for our government-including our new bosses, the Chinese, the Lebanese and the Indians. But I will like to stick to the tribalised road of gallops. I laugh at those senators and government officials who went to pay homage to Emeka Odumegu Ojukwu lately. The great Nigerian-biafran general and one of the country’s well respected and organised politician (A lot of politicians are not organised), who passed away last year November but was buried in March 2012. Those roads leading to Aba, Abia, Enugu, Owerri and other parts are still as bad as they were when Babangida was the Head of State in 1985, some are still bad reminders of the fake reconciliation the rest of Nigerian people have co-opted the Igbos after the war the Igbos agreed to. Some roads have been washed away by the sensitive rains leaving it bare like a confused village of human animals. I have spoken to some of my Igbo friends (A lot of Igbos are not conscious of the dilemma of their political class and how their liberation -not secession will lead to a real federation) about the state of roads leading to their villages, towns and cities. Onitsha, one of the most industrial markets sits beside a craggy, nondescript something called a road, Even the Niger Bridge built by the grace of Tafawa Balewa is shaking and government is not ready to do anything until so many lives are lost and CNN and Aljazera comes to the rescue. The Igbos are preys in the Nigerian nation, they are still haunted-but their lack of unity, their high taste for acquiring wealth-not as a nation but as individuals have also added a clog to the wheel of their collective progress. There is a saying that a rich man in the midst of community of poor people is a poor man but not the Igbos. No wonder we are doomed as a nation. When no good leads to the homes of some of the creative, entrepreneurial spirits we have in the country-then we are doomed. The Niger Delta enjoys good roads you will say but alas that is not true. There it is not about the tribal depression. It is about curroption that oil exploration and business has caused . No wonder you are enlivened to see well constructed tarmacs, car parks and roads leading to state government houses, houses of chiefs who have constantly sold their people out for pennies and of course, roads leading to foreign and independently owned companies.There are Niger Delta development ministries and parastatals that are supposed to see to the rapid progress of the place, but the personalities are always over themselves in a fight for supremacy and raw cash from government and oil companies. The doom of the Niger Delta are its leaders and it chiefs, it’s elite and it’s thieves. That is where the socio-economic divide is loudest. With education at the minimal level and more kiosk classrooms where no one wants to learn when he can be making money from militancy and piracy or when she can open her clitoris for a French, Spanish, English, Carribean, Chinese and lebenese prick-even for every Nigerian dick and harry. The roads stop where the fresh air of air-conditioners and the nice cars stop for the dust and the acrid smell oil and the pictoral explanation of a fishing nation with no more fish in its waters. Oh there’s amnesty! For me, that is what are call temporary bandage for a huge sore, that will soon swallow the bandage. To say an iota has not come out of the Niger Delta in terms of road construction is far from the truth. But note that developments in the Delta are a product of militancy and that tells us something. No Threats, No Unrests-No response from the Federal Government of Nigeria. Some of the roads that may have mistakenly passed the passages of the poor are ways to placate the community before their youth erupt and stop oil exploration. I don’t like writing about the north. I spent my formative years in the north and therefore have a pathetic inclination to northern issues. I will say that the north has produced more Heads of State in Nigeria than all the tribes put together and that must have paid off in terms of road networks in the region. These ex-Heads of States may have been monsters but there were careful to construct long lasting or enduring roads that lead to the cities and towns in the north. This is not to say that there are no desert, dust and locust infested areas in the north. I travelled to Bauchi some years ago for a business meeting with some northern crème de la crème-mostly civil servants who may have future political ambitions, after all they make up 99.9 percent of the educated few in the region and I was impressed by the clarity of road developments that have lasted. Autocracy has paid off-tyrannical governments better the lives of some people, you know? Students of history will not be surprised at the reoccurrence of history in a flaccid cultural sphere. However I was lucky to visit or to sneak into the villages where the roads also stop. There, good roads are quickly replaced by flies, malaria, smell of traditional condiments and animal feed. This is where the future lies for the north-the result of Boko Haram is the detachment of the northern elite from their people and the long suffering retaliation of a few. Of course, I do not want to jettison the idea of Boko Haram being political ,but I must claim that the poverty in the north has provided grounds for die-hard commandos, trained to feel no pain and joy in the deaths of others. A poor man is a ready tool for religious fanatics-just a cup of rice and some small small things will do. People don’t think that when a road stops, then development stops. The people in those areas are cut off from rapid development and are always struggling to become, but until they become ready monsters our dear beloved Ebele Jonathan and his fellow “Sit-down-dey look government boys” will not respond. Long live Nigeria, if it really wants to live.