That swearing-in at Kaduna

Ordinarily, one would have loved to comment on the usual mini ceremony capped with lot of speeches, wining and dining reminiscent of such events. However, the agony that the swearing-in of Patrick Ibrahim yakowa’s cabinet inflicted on unsuspecting motorists on that fateful day is better imagined. As a bona fide citizen of this country, I, […]

Ordinarily, one would have loved to comment on the usual mini ceremony capped with lot of speeches, wining and dining reminiscent of such events. However, the agony that the swearing-in of Patrick Ibrahim yakowa’s cabinet inflicted on unsuspecting motorists on that fateful day is better imagined.

As a bona fide citizen of this country, I, as well as the thousands of my country men who were trapped in the uncontrollable and seemingly unending traffic jam feel cheated. Our rights had been walked on by the people we voted into power. Under excruciating pains due to overstay on the steering wheel, roaring of engine of trucks and other locomotive, heavy down-pour and lethal fog being emitted from the vehicles’ exhausts, we were stucked for  hours with no explanation or apology from Kaduna state government .

Usually, a traffic rancor-free express road, Kaduna-kano dual carriageway from both coming in and going out of town was an eye sore that day .Leaving Abuja with the intension of stopping over at the popular rest area at Dankande to say the zuhr and Asr prayers by 2:00 pm before I would proceed to kano, my final destination, I found myself in the midst of unbearable heavy traffic. No sooner had I descended from the Kawo Bridge, near 1st Div. hospital before Total filling station than I was greeted with the most horrendous traffic jam I have ever witnessed in my life. An ordinary 10 minutes drive from Kawo to Dankande took me 3 hours 45 ninutes. Parking at Dankande to wind down a little following the frustration caused by the traffic was not possible because the whole parking space allotted to vehicles in the precincts had been occupied by vehicles that did not seem to leave in a hurry because of the falling rain.

The delay caused by the traffic had affected normal and easy vehicular movement from the entire length of Kaduna to Kano. The continued down pour coupled with reckless driving had caused two ghastly accidents that involved lost of lives in the outskirts of Zaria city and after Ciromawa village in Kano state.

The lesson I learnt from the Kaduna swearing-in traffic debacle was a manifestation of Nigeria’s official high-handedness- lack of respect for common man, power drunkenness, poor administration and wanton official recklessness. This simply shows that the leaders and the led are one million poles away from each other in our country. There is no Sympathy or empathy among those that lead and their teeming crowd of illiterate hunger stricken blind followers.

I still could not understand why an ordinary swearing –in of state commissioners will hold thousands of travelers hostage. As I ponder over this, did any officials of the Kaduna state government ask why or how the unfortunate incident occurs and what damage that this singular gaffe would cause to their political fortune?

Those in power should not take people for a ride. Nobody who has suffered from those wasted hours on unnecessary road traffic will be expected to forgive, especially when the perpetrators decide to keep mute as if nothing had happened.

The body language of the victims as exhibited in the forlorn faces they wore and the utterance by some of them at the prayer ground at Dankande did indeed betray their disappointment and anguish. The shower of abuse and castigation, prayer for Allah’s wrath and curses on those that caused the sufferings were repeatedly invoked by a group of passengers who were trapped in the traffic. As the salvo of verbal onslaught continued, the elderly were cautioning the aggrieved people for patience, some commuters, yours sincerely inclusive, resort our case to the court of the poor man with a Hausa phrase ALLAH YA ISA.

Our advice to His Excellency, Governor Yakowa or better still to all governors in this country is that they should be considerate when organizing their political or official events. It is gross injustice to block roads and hamper vehicular movement because of political rallies and states’ official ceremonies.

What those that voted the executives in power expect from them is not the long speeches and avalanche of hired commercial buses and crowd of political thugs at swearing-in ceremonies. The people need action and speedy positive impact on their lives from those that claim to be their leaders and representatives.  

Bature wrote from Army post service scheme, Kuruduma, Abuja.