Opinion: Open letter to Fashola on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – By NIRAN ADEDOKUN
Dear Minister,
I hope this letter, hopefully not an irritant, meets you well. I also hope that your family is well, and that work is going smoothly.
About work, I am thankful that the presidential campaign of your “great party” spared you from the rigours of electioneering. It is gratifying that the party has allowed you to continue in the service of Nigerians without the distractions of politics.
Speaking about service, thank you for the good work you seem to do. You always speak, with admirable pride, about so so thousands of kilometres of roads the regime of Major General Muhammadu Buhari(retd.) has built across the country. Sometime in October, you said you had constructed 8,352.94 kilometres of roads and created 339,955 jobs in six years. This is indeed heart-warming.
Even though I do not consider road construction and rehabilitation a badge of pride for any government, Nigerian roads have been neglected forever. Interventions like yours are therefore, critical.
So, we should allow you to have your moments in the sun, even though thousands of kilometres of other roads remain death traps as we speak. I imagine you have not travelled on some of these roads since reports once quoted you as saying that Nigerian roads were not “that bad.”
As offensive as this sounded, that you are doing something—and something innovative is consoling. Examples of the creativity you have brought into the management of Nigerian roads are manifest in the model adopted for the Apapa-Oshodi-Tollgate Expressway and the Second Niger Bridge, among others.
However, every time you speak, I get the sense that you think you are doing Nigerians a favour with this “good work.” You also give the impression that you are infallible, too perfect to make mistakes or receive caution from citizens. Awkward.
Sometimes these utterances are not from you directly. Some officials of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing also come off with the impression that Nigerians are an incorrigible people and that those at the FMW know it all! I am going to give you an example of this in a moment, but permit me to say before then that you and your officials are wrong on both scores.
In justifying my position, I intend to draw illustrations from the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, about which I have written in the past.
A couple of weeks back, Director, South-West, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Adedamola Kuti, was on Channels Television.
He dismissed complaints about how long people get stuck on this road, put the blame on unruly Nigerians who drive against traffic and concluded that if everyone stayed in lane, they would be out of the traffic, starting from the OPIC end of the road in 15 minutes. I found that condescending and an attempt to beg the issue.
The first thing is that the average drive time from the start to the end of the long bridge takes between two and four hours. Sometimes, people are on the stretch for five hours!
It is wrong for people to drive against traffic, but Nigerians take the law into their hands when the government fails in its duty. In addition, the elite also pull their motorcades on the other side road, so the people only follow. Punch
