Nigeria’s long road to nationhood
For not the first time I became a Traffic Warden. Not by choice. There was I with my wife and kids heading for Murtala International Airport, Lagos for them to catch a flight to London by 1.20pm. Time was 10am on a Thursday, which ordinarily should not be traffic laden even though Lagos traffic is as unpredictable as the British weather. But we began to experience pockets of ‘go-slow’ from the Magodo to Secretariat approach. It looked bad strangely on both sides of the dual carriageway.
The ‘go-slow’ got worse along the China Town/Oworonsoki axis, apparently due to the raging fuel scarcity that meant long stretches of vehicles queueing by petrol stations.
Turning onto the Gbagada/Anthony/Oshodi expressway gave us huge relief, as the road was as free as the air. Time check: 11.15am. Phew! We sped through and managed the little rowdiness of unruly danfos before turning right unto the international airport way. And then a few hundreds of metres on the traffic ground to a halt.to grind to a halt. But, horrors of horrors, five, ten minutes on and we remained on the same spot. Another five, ten minutes and perspiration set in spiting the car air-condition.
It was getting to 12 o’clock. For an international flight ordinarily the airline check-in counter should be about to close. So I got out of the car and began the frantic walk through the bedlam to find where it all began. And the madness was nothing but mad Nigerians competing to beat the queue for fuel an international airport road with scores of intending passengers, hurrying to catch their flights?
So, I turned my self into a veritable traffic warden. With hands flailing up and down, left and right, and eyes threatening to fall out of their sockets , I took total control of the situation waving cars on the inside lanes and giving the command to straddling cars to move off one way or the other. Caring little who recognized me or who didn’t, I got into it.
It must have gone on for (again!) five, ten minutes when our white jeep appeared in sight. Two lanes for the airport traffic were now moving apace whilst the right hand side of the road was a pitiable jungle of cars.
We were lucky to find the check-in counter still battling with a horde of passengers apparently also caught up in the road madness and consequently eliciting the airline officials’ sympathy to extend the time grace. But no hauling his luggage and running for God-knows-how-long not to miss his flight. Unfortunately, he did.
It was a nightmare. With time to ruminate on it later, I was sad that my country is in a soulless state of unseriousness.
There is a sense in which my recourse could be said to be more for myself than for my country. Nay, the country had not been without men (and women) who at different times carried the burden of the country on their shoulders. We had Prof. Awojobi, the engineer turned “public prosecutor” who engaged the state in unending litigations for public good until he died trying; we had Dr. Tai Solarin who, repulsed by the sight of corpses (yes, human corpses) littering the highways and city centres, imposed it upon himself to stop whenever and wherever he came upon one and physically removed the decomposing body. He did that amongst other battles for the people – until he breathed his last! We had Gani Fawehinmi whose record in legal battles against the state and for the common man is unequalled – till he died fighting!
The lack of sense of duty, the lack of sense of patriotism, the lack of collective spirit of good and bad, the lack of ennobling values, is pervasive. Nobody cares.
The rot in the system and the body polity runs too deep. Hence we heard an Air Force chief, Air Commodore Salisu Abdullahi Yushau (retd.) saying in court evidence matter-of-factly that what former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh was being accused of, namely, the monthly diversion of N558.2m from the Air Force salaries till to his personal use was nothing unusual.
What is clear is that we are going nowhere as a country for as long as citizen action is in suspense whilst the country’s leaders run wild in their indiscretions and unconscionable ways. The country is going nowhere if we all fold our arms watching and waiting for Buhari alone to wrought his magic. The country is going nowhere if we cannot develop a collective spirit against what is bad and evolve unified set of values and public zero tolerance for their negation. It’s a long road yet to nationhood.
And that’s saying it the way it is!
