Galadimawa as metaphor

If you want to understand the dysfunctional nature of service delivery in Nigeria, drive to a district of Abuja known as Galadimawa. Like Ojuelegba (made famous by Fela’s song, “Confusion”) hundreds of cars from the four directions of the compass are heading for a needle’s eye at Galadimawa, creating a totally preventable spectacle of human […]

If you want to understand the dysfunctional nature of service delivery in Nigeria, drive to a district of Abuja known as Galadimawa. Like Ojuelegba (made famous by Fela’s song, “Confusion”) hundreds of cars from the four directions of the compass are heading for a needle’s eye at Galadimawa, creating a totally preventable spectacle of human misery.

There is a Chinese construction firm that has been working at the Galadimawa roundabout for about four years. You would think they were constructing the Wall of China. The FCT authorities who are supposed to monitor such constructions apparently shirked their duties as there was no provision for smooth flow of traffic while the snail pace construction crawled along.

What gave the authorities the opportunity to compound an already bad situation was the flooding of the bypass that connects the Airport Road for traffic coming from Games Village. Somebody responsible for clearing the drains did not do his work and the canal filled up and flooded the bypass, drowning one public official on his way to catch a flight. That incident gave the government the excuse it needed to permanently shut the bypass, thereby compounding Galadimawa’s problem.

As always, government wasn’t interested in the cause of the tragedy. To my knowledge, no staff of the FCT or its agency, has been punished for the avoidable tragedy. The only solution government could think off was the knee-jerk decision to close down the bypass.

Every airport-bound vehicle coming from the National Stadium/Games Village axis had to get to Galadimawa Roundabout before navigating its way towards its destination. The Galadimawa area has the highest concentration of housing estates in Abuja. The vehicular traffic on a normal day is high. To compound it with the closure of the bypass was nothing short of stupid.

Residents of the area had tried to engage the authorities by writing the FCT Minister but nothing positive happened until the area ground to a halt last Tuesday. The traffic hold-up snaked its way for the whole of eight kilometres. In Nigerian parlance, it wasn’t a go-slow, it was a hold-up — a standstill. Word went round that the situation was caused by a church which was having its weekly women’s fellowship. But they had been holding their fellowship in the past without grinding the area to a halt, hadn’t they?

It was all buck-passing. Government officials in the FCT don’t accept responsibility for anything. Many parents had to return their children home when it became clear that they were going to spend the better part of the day on the road. Businessmen and public officials living in that axis either went back home or made a u-turn to seek other escape routes.

People were spitting fire on social media. Many advocated that the FCT be made a mayoralty so that they could vote for competent people to run its affairs. The present system where ministers are appointed and are apparently so detached from the people that they are oblivious of their pains and struggles is defective, to say the least.

If one judges all Chinese contractors by the snail speed of the one at the Galadimawa Roundabout, one is bound to think that incompetence is the hallmark of contractors from that part of the world. But that is not true. Isn’t China the home of the longest over-sea bridge in the world which crosses the Pearl River estuary to connect the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong and Macau?

No, I don’t underrate Chinese contractors at all. Didn’t they build the world’s deepest and Asia’s largest underground high-speed railway station beneath the Great Wall at the Badaling section in Beijing — about 12 storeys underground?

What baffles many people is how we manage to wind up with second-rate contractors who don’t even understand the simple imperative of ensuring alternative passage for vehicles while construction is ongoing. Many people are now asking how many more years the contractor needs to complete the overhead bridge.

As with many things in Nigeria, when Galadimawa eventually ground to a halt, the authorities finally woke up from their slumber. Somehow, government officials reached out to the contractor and persuaded him to open a lane cutting through the roundabout so that vehicles bound for the many housing estates could be freed up. At the same time, the bypass to the airport was reopened. Like magic, the nightmare ended.

But the relief was short-lived. Last Saturday, a policeman blocked that new road on the roundabout, forcing all vehicles to go round the roundabout before heading for their destinations. A police checkpoint (I didn’t say tollgate) is on that axis. So, you understand!

However, for the first time I saw real defiance. When traffic had built up to the extent that cars were spending 30 minutes on the same spot, motorists rose as one and removed the boulder blocking the road. Sensing an uprising, the police beat a hasty retreat.

Up till now, nobody is answering the question: Who sited a police post on Galadimawa Roundabout?

Whereas rising traffic congestion is an inescapable condition in large metropolitan areas all over the world, commuters are often frustrated by policymakers’ inability to take proactive steps to ameliorate the problem. They wait for a tragedy or a near-insurrection before they show up in all their arrogance to grudgingly do what they ought to have done eons ago.

If the situation at Galadimawa is not a fitting metaphor for goings-on in your neck of the Nigerian woods, tell me a crazier fib.