Staying outside Lagos for a few days makes you realise how hectic life in this city has become. While you will be able to move from one end of a city to the other in any other state capital within one hour, you surely will not be able to do same in Lagos.
A man forgot his mobile phone after a meeting around Ijora, and upon getting to Apapa, a distance of less than seven kilometres, decided to go for his phone. He spent four hours because something had happened: a trailer broke down and blocked one of the bridges.
Life in Apapa and around the seaports is quite rough. You cannot do business without riding on the motor bike (Okada) to beat the traffic at blocked sections of the road. The Police will not let the Okada move freely because of the ban which is currently in force.
The drivers of buses called Danfo are also there, but very impatient, ruthless, with little or no regard for life of their passengers and other road users. They have no rules. You can only enter or exit Apapa from either the Tin Can route, or Ijora flyover route.
The Tin Can route is most unpredictable, because of the ever-present menace of trailers, and heavy trucks with the brakes that are often ready and willing to fail any moment. Container-laden trucks brake down regularly, some of the trucks constantly cough and discharge thick black, carbon monoxide- laden smoke along their trails, the worst air pollution you can imagine. It is a nightmare to travel on this route if your vehicle is not air-conditioned, and no danfo is air-conditioned.
They must close their door, to avoid being stopped by LASTMA officials, making the bus another chamber filled with chocking odours! The heavy concentration of petroleum products tank farms and their tanker drivers complicate the human and traffic challenge of this route. Danfos are driven flagrantly against the traffic at any time, especially between Mile 2 and Cele Bus-stop along the Apapa-Oshodi expressway where you can run into a bus coming opposite you at full speed!
Mile 2 and Celebus-stop have defied all the numerous traffic law enforcement personnel, from LASTMA, VIOs, to the ever indulging policemen. An escape route from Apapa would have been the Malu Road-Achakpo- Otto Wolf Road, but Julius Berger has turned its blind eyes to the flooded huge craters along their fence on the Otto Wolfe-Achakpo Road.
The decay in that road, along the wall of the beautifully, well-laid out Julius Berger Yard, gives a proper reflection of the reality of the dichotomy and incongruities of the life of the average Nigerian in a country blessed with abundance. This road, with the snail pace of progress of work on the Mile 2 /Oshodi expressway for over two years now, makes one begin to wonder if the Julius Berger we see today, is the same that was here in the years of military rule.
In those days Julius Berger, to many, meant speed, high technology, good and strong delivery. But today, in spite of their display of heavy equipment along Mile2 – Oshodi Road, we still have flood at the neck of Mile2 bridge whenever it rains.
At the pace of their work along that road, commuters will continue to suffer till 2015, and far beyond.
The rough Lagos life is majorly because of the population explosion that started in Lagos when it was both the economic capital and seat of power of Nigeria.
Industries flourished in Lagos, the Federal Ministries were in Lagos, money and power were all concentrated in Lagos; there was employment and life in abundance in Lagos. Nigeria’s biggest airports and seaports, the main gate ways to the economy, are located in Lagos. The true indigenes of Lagos remain very hospitable people, making life in Lagos free for anyone, and thereby inducing some to forget that things are fast changing.
Today, many industries have folded up and left Lagos due to poor management and wicked leadership of the country. The Federal Government has since moved to Abuja; politics crept into revenue allocation and release to Lagos, reducing it to mainly an import and export centre, and as population continues to soar, quality of life in Lagos has increasingly continued to deteriorate.
According to the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, we were suffering and smiling. Indeed today, Lagosians are suffering, dying, and not smiling. The problem is so gigantic that Governor Babatunde Fashola’s administration has been trying many approaches to decongest the place, including encouraging people to leave Lagos and even deporting some.
But more must have to be done if Lagos will be reasonably decongested. The most reasonable strategy to decongest Lagos is to spread the distribution of those things that pull people to come to Lagos to other parts of the metropolis and country.
First, with the discovery of oil around Lagos shorelines , it will be best advised that Badagry town should be made the key petroleum products seaport of Lagos, with major roads and links created between Badagry and other parts of Nigeria via Ogun State, etc, to take the pressure off the city of Lagos.
Second the FG, should decide between Badagry, Ikorodu and Epe, where the Navy, Air Force and the Army should be located permanently in the long run.
Third, seaports of the size of Tincan Island port, or bigger ones should be built in Onitsha, Oguta, Bayelsa, Port Harcourt, and Oron areas where closeness to the ocean becomes an advantage. If the United Arab Emirates could build an ultramodern seaport in their terrain, Nigeria should be able to build at least six ultramodern seaports of 36 berths each within our regions.
Finally, more international airports of the size of the one in Abuja should be built in Imo, Benue and Sokoto states, such that an average Nigerian will be able to engage in any international type of enterprise in any zone without having to come to or visit Lagos, except he so chooses.
Mr. CLEMENT UDEGBE, a legal practitioner, wrote from Lagos. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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The most important transport infrastructure is the railway.
ReplyDeleteWithout it, there will be congestion, regular damage with associated increased cost on lagos roads and beyond.
Most of the trailers you see in lagos laden with goods, are heading for the north.
Well said a serious attention should be given to our railway system,we need to grow as a nation,if there are fast modern railway,pple can be living in neighbouring cities like sagamu,abeokuta etc and be working in lagos,we need visionary leaders to be able to get this done.
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