Two major road accidents
in the last week brought to the fore again the dangers that lie in wait
on Nigerian roads. The Minister of State for Labour and Productivity,
James Ocholi, SAN, his wife and son lost their lives in a vehicle accident
that occurred on the Kaduna- Abuja road, when their Lexus SUV vehicle
somersaulted, following a burst tyre and the driver’s loss of control.
There was also the death
on the Maiduguri-Damaturu road of Major-General Yasha’u Abubakar of the
Training and Operations Department of the Nigerian Army. Both accidents
have been a source of enormous grief, perhaps because of the status of
the persons involved, but the truth is that Nigerian roads are
treacherous and deceitful, marked as they are everyday, by a harvest of
deaths and sorrow.
To report that the
state of the roads is bad is to proclaim the notoriously obvious, and
to say that more people die every minute on our roads is to iterate that
the road in Nigeria is no respecter of persons or class. In its annual
reports, the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has tried to identify
the primary and secondary causes of road accidents, and in the current
Ocholi case, it has offered a preliminary report, which reinforces the
notion about every death being in the long run, a revelatory comment on
man’s existential crisis.
The regret is
that the death that occurs on Nigerian roads, is more often than not,
man-made, regretfully self-invited and for that reason, mostly
avoidable. Anyone who has ever travelled on Nigerian roads would
readily admit that going onto those roads is like taking a risk and no
man can call himself safe until he returns home in one piece at the end
of the day. Many of our roads are pothole-ridden, bumpy and poorly
maintained. Before the ad hoc resurfacing of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway
from the Lagos end, there were uneven portions, which always made it
seem as if the road was struggling with the driver to seize control of
the steering wheel.
One moment of
distraction, you could find yourself careering off the road. From the
Ibadan end of the Expressway, there were hidden, deep potholes. Many
motorists found themselves suddenly landing into those potholes only to
lose their tyres or lives. So bad is this dilemma that many motorists
require prior knowledge of the state of the road to be able to drive on
it; that knowledge means knowing where the potholes are at what point
and where dangerous contours need to be avoided. Years of neglect and
lack of maintenance have reproduced this pattern across the country.
It takes repeated and
costly accidents before the appropriate authorities would rush to mend
the roads. And this is not just on the highways; even inner city roads
are problematic. When it rains in most Nigerian towns and cities, life
grinds to a halt, because the roads are transformed into streams,
overflowing with water, due to poor drainage, and from struggling to
turn the vehicle into a boat and avoid unseen potholes, the worst may
happen. We are almost in that season again, and soon the stories will be
told, of accidents caused by slippery, water-logged and dangerous
roads.
This fact of
administrative and official failure is an important footnote to the FRSC
report in the Ocholi case which draws attention to the driver’s
negligence, over-speeding, his criminal conduct -driving without a
licence (but note that he is a government driver!- who on earth assigned
him to drive an official vehicle without a licence (?) and then, the
non-use of seat belt by the deceased persons, who in the event of the
accident were flung out of the vehicle, in addition to the wrong
orientation of the vehicle’s tyres. The revelations by the FRSC
Investigation Team should serve as necessary warning to drivers,
passengers, vehicle owners and all road users, indeed all of us.
Too many Nigerian road
users behave as if life has a duplicate. I have seen drivers who insist
“Oga don’t worry”. When you remind them about speed limits, their
standard response is “Oga don’t worry”. Every Oga who sits in the
owner’s corner should worry. There is no guarantee that accidents won’t
occur. Reckless driving is the bane of the Nigerian road.
Commercial
drivers are drunk most of the time, or they are under some kind of
influence including the metaphysical which induces them to tell you that
the vehicle is covered by the “blood of Jesus”, or that ‘No weapon
fashioned against them shall prosper.” The more traditional ones insist
that they have killed a dog for Ogun, the god of iron and so, Ogun will
not forsake his own. As the FRSC has indicated, there are thousands
behind the wheels on Nigerian roads who have never bothered to undergo a
driving test, and these include persons working as official drivers.
There is also the
problem of vehicle maintenance. Half of the vehicles on our roads are
either not roadworthy or they are poorly maintained. Have you not heard
the drivers who are fond of saying: “we can manage Oga; I fit manage
am”. The tyres are worn out, the wheel balancing and alignment are bad,
but the Nigerian driver will rather “manage”. Even when the brakes begin
to fail, the natural response is to “manage.” We don’t “worry” enough
about safety; we cut corners and procrastinate, when the vehicle gives
warning signs, we ignore, when the road breaks down, we look the other
way.
It is this
mentality that has made many of the employed drivers corrupt. When you
give them money to buy fuel, they short-change you; when the vehicle is
to be taken for repairs, they undercut you; when anything goes wrong,
they refuse to inform you until it is too late. And yet, there are too
many big men in Nigeria relying on drivers and not paying enough
attention. It is a sign of status and class, to employ a driver or to be
assigned one, but very few big men and women bother to monitor the men
into whose hands their lives are entrusted.
The point about
seat belt deserves to be properly underlined. Following the accidents
under reference, there has been much talk about the importance of seat
belts. According to the FRSC, “the ejection of the minister and his
son, who occupied the rear seat, confirmed the fact that their rear seat
belts were not in use and on the contrary, the driver and the orderly
survived because the front seat belts were in use”. It is sad that many
big men don’t worry about using seat belts. It is considered too much of
an effort for a man to own a vehicle, or be big enough to be driven by
another, only for him to tie himself down in the back seat.
The widespread
assumption is that the space called owner’s corner is meant for
sprawling; it is regarded as a place of comfort from where the master
backs orders at the assistants in the front seat! This owner’s corner
syndrome has caused the death of many “big men and women”, there must be
a vigorous campaign launched at all levels by the FRSC, civil society
groups and other agencies to remind everyone that it is better to be a
big man or woman alive than to ignore a simple safety task and lose
one’s life.
The FRSC is
threatening to prosecute late Minister Ocholi’s driver as soon as he is
discharged from the hospital. But the FRSC must see in this experience,
further justification for it to be more vigilant and assertive with its
vehicle accident prevention strategies. It must launch a fresh and
vigorous campaign against reckless driving, set clear speed limits,
acquire the relevant technology to determine the abuse of those limits
and raise its organizational capacity to prevent motorists from
willfully committing suicide or killing others, by apprehending the
reckless and enforcing the relevant laws. This should include descending
heavily on persons who use the phone while driving.
I can’t count the
number of times other motorists nearly drove into a vehicle or
constituted pure nuisance, just because they are busy driving with one
hand and using the other hand to wield a phone while chatting heartily
as if they are in their living rooms. When you call such persons to
order, they have no qualms telling you to get lost or mind your own
business!
The FRSC used to
have many volunteers, otherwise known as Special Marshals, who effected
citizen arrest or helped to make the roads saner either by controlling
traffic or checking the excesses of other motorists. That volunteer
corps should be re-energized. And anyone who does not have a driver’s
licence should be sanctioned. The current penalties appear cheap, and so
motorists are tempted to do as they wish. Speed violation attracts only
a fine of N3, 000, driving under the influence - N5, 000, vehicle
license violation -N3, 000, driving without seat belt – N2, 000; use of
phone while driving- N4, 000; only dangerous driving attracts a fine as
high as N50, 000, but of course by the time that N50, 000 is paid, lives
may have been lost!
These fines and
penalties should be reviewed. Nigerians often choose which laws to
respect or not and damn the consequences, particularly if they can
easily pay a fine and walk away.
The various
tributes on late Minister Ocholi have been touching, the story is sad,
and may the Lord grant him, his wife, and son, peaceful repose, but
after all the tears have been shed and the tributes delivered, what must
be done is not to walk away until another tragedy occurs, but to take
concrete steps to prevent similar accidents in the future, especially
for the sake of the many unknown victims who die daily on our roads, and
whose tragedy is unreported and unmourned.
At the level of
policy and action, note this: the first step is to separate the
all-important task of making our roads safe and motorable from
corrosive, partisan politics, itself a principal stumbling block.
By Reuben Abati.
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