Cost of ill-equipped emergency managers

Zuba is a satellite town in Gwagwalada Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It is situated along the busy Kaduna-Lokoja high way; linking the FCT to about a dozen northern states. The motor spare parts market located in Zuba makes it a popular town. The booming fruits market is another pride of Zuba. […]

Zuba is a satellite town in Gwagwalada Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It is situated along the busy Kaduna-Lokoja high way; linking the FCT to about a dozen northern states. The motor spare parts market located in Zuba makes it a popular town. The booming fruits market is another pride of Zuba.
Regrettably anyway, Zuba has over time become a black spot where accidents involving petrol tankers are witnessed more often than not. Scores of people and several vehicles parked within 20 meters radius from such accident scenes were burnt to ashes on many occasions. The fact that most of the accidents at Zuba involving petrol tankers occurred where they shouldn’t, strongly suggests that they were preventable if only drivers of the ill-fated vehicles had adhered to traffic regulations.
Over-speeding has been a factor in many of the accidents at this spot. The place between the overhead bridge that links the highway to the Zuba-Abuja expressway and the T-junction of the road that leads to motor spare parts market is a spot where traffic is always heavy. It would therefore be lunatic for anyone to recklessly drive on speed within this spot which is all the time congested.
The rate at which petrol tankers get involved in road accidents these days cannot completely be isolated from the age-group of those who drive such vehicles. Before now, most petrol tanker drivers (and of trailers as well) were people in their 40s and above which was probably why they exhibited enough maturity in their driving skills and in their use of roads. Sadly today, majority of petrol tanker drivers are very young boys who do not only lack respect for road signs and other road users but are drunks and drug addicts. Many of these young taker-drivers handle such big vehicles as if they were wheel barrows in their hands.
Last week Saturday November 14 was a day when one of such preventable accidents occurred at the black spot in Zuba. Caught up in the traffic jam that lasted for hours as a result of the accident, I was privileged to seeing ‘trained’ professionals who failed to display minimum professionalism while on duty.
After driving for four hours on a journey from Niger State that should have ordinarily lasted two hours if the roads were good, I got to Zuba at about 3 pm; few minutes after a petrol tanker had an accident at the black spot by the Zuba overhead bridge. I was about 500 meters away from the scene of the accident; a distance I couldn’t drive through in five hours due to inexcusable factors that include an ill-equipped set of emergency managers who came for rescue operation.
The accident, which claimed three lives, soon created a thick hold-up on the Kaduna-Lokoja axis of the highway; extending in less than half an hour beyond the u-turn at Madalla where vehicles on this lane of the road started diverting into the Lokoja-Kaduna lane to drive against traffic; thereby worsening the gridlock. Lagos is one place where driving against the flow of traffic was seldom seen under former governor Babatunde Fashola. That’s one traffic law which the new minister of the FCT, Alhaji Muhammad Bello, should strive to enforce.   
The long hours spent by rescue and disaster management agencies to clear the obstruction caused by the crashed petrol tanker at Zuba revealed the many weaknesses, incapacities and failures of such rescue outfits. With the presence in Abuja of NEMA, the FRSC (which has a post just about 20 meters away from the scene of the accident), the police and the VIOs, none for instance, brought a crane to lift the crashed petrol tanker from the road.
Is it not shameful that it was three hours after the accident that a privately owned crane was ‘commandeered’ from a nearby site, I guess, by on-lookers and those caught up the gridlock to lift the petrol tanker and save the chaotic traffic situation? Is it not proper that a crane is stationed by the FRSC at its post in Zuba for that sort of emergency? Is it too expensive that FRSC cannot, as a rescue and safety agency, provide at least one crane each at all the satellite towns (Nyanya, Gwagwalada, Zuba and Bwari) that serve as entry points in to the FCT?
When our snail slow movement in the gridlock finally brought us to the accident spot, I saw things that I found amazing; depicting a collection of ‘trained’ rescuers and emergency managers who were nothing better than failures in their professional duties. Those at the accident spot included fire-fighters, the police, FRSC; VIOs; and the NSCDC. It really crossed my mind when I saw uniformed personnel from these agencies all watching how the crane operator was dexterously manipulating the vehicle’s levers and gears to lift the crashed petrol tanker from the road. It absolutely caught their attention as if it were a football match in a World Cup final between Nigeria and Brazil.
The engines of the fire-fighting water tankers were not put on just as the fire-fighters themselves joined the crowd of spectators that was standing very close to the tanker. That seemed very unprofessional on their part. If, for any reason, the tanker had gone in to flames while the rescue was on, it would have consumed the entire throng of on-lookers, including fire-fighters who should have in the first place prevented the crowd from getting close to the accident scene. What a professional failure in real terms!
Another aberration I also noticed during my 5-hour stay in the traffic jam was that physically-challenged people and motor-park touts, in place of the FRSC and the police, took over the control of traffic. Those who are statutorily charged with this duty of controlling traffic were, sorry to say, busy watching how the crane operator was doing what he knew best!
The five hours it took to clear the highway of the gridlock that shouldn’t have lasted half an hour is, indeed, the cost of ill-equipped and poorly-trained rescuers and emergency managers. May Allah (SWT) guide the chief executives of all rescue and emergency management agencies to provide an exemplary leadership that would prioritise equipment provision and personnel training, amin.