The ‘best’ road in Nigeria

many lives and properties have been lost to trailer accidents…

Yes, the ‘best’ road in Nigeria is in Niger State. You’ll soon be convinced why the road qualifies as the best. It is a federal highway and the only alternative road, aside of the Kaduna-Birnin Gwari-Mokwa route, that links the Northern part of the country with Southwest Nigeria. It is the Lambata-Lapai-Agaie-Bida road. Birnin Gwari route has been abandoned because of criminal activities of bandits and kidnappers. Before this road failed about two and half decades ago, it only took a careful motorist a maximum of two hours to arrive Bida from Suleja (a distance of about 156 kilometers). Now, a driver requires about eight hours to travel from Suleja to Bida in a small car. He needs at least one and half hour or more to drive from Lapai to Agaie (a distance of 27 kilometers) and three hours to drive from Agaie to Bida (a distance of 37 kilometers only). It is days for trailers and tankers.

To share my last week’s experience on the road with readers, the account (due to limited space) shall only cover the 27km trip from Lapai to Agaie where I counted over 500 trailers and tankers many of which had spent days without covering the distance. At several points, the road was blocked by broken down trailers that left no space for others to use; forcing motorists to turn off their car engines. Other tanker drivers used their vehicles to block the road in protest against the state of the road; leaving small cars to use the bush. The traffic gridlock had extended from Badeggi to after Agaie. When my own car developed a problem, it took me three hours to cover the 27km in a commercial vehicle. I mused at a piont that the road to Agaie must be a road to heaven. While travellers going to Lapai and Bida from Abuja may have alternative routes, those travelling to Agaie have no other choices; making them the worst hit by the poor state of the road. People going to Lapai could take Paiko route road just as persons travelling to Bida could pass through Minna. But those going to Agaie are caught in ‘Oga Fashola’s’ web. The road remains the ‘best’ for those who have no alternative routes.

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Besides the tears and wears, many lives and properties have been lost to trailer accidents. Some survivors were left with permanent disabilities. Explosions from petrol tankers have killed many in Lapai and Agaie communities. A policeman that was sending back villagers who were scooping petrol from a tanker that had accident near Agaie on Sunday July 11, 2021 died in the explosion that ensued from it.  Patients in critical conditions die on their way to Federal Medical Center Bida from Agaie. The Lapai-Agaie-Bida road, I guess, could rival Ibn Battuta’s adventurous expeditions. I hope Malam Kabiru Yusuf would soon have a good reason to travel, at least, between Lapai and Agaie so that the travelogue column in Daily Trust will capture the agricultural and other economic treasures of Nupe communities.

But if this road is as bad as illustrated above, why then is it described as the ‘best’? To explain that, we need to define some rhetorical concepts. The choice of the word ‘best’ to describe the terribly bad road derives from the concept classified by Arabic rhetoricians as “derogation in the guise of praise” (or “Ta’akidu Dham Bi Ma Ushbihul Mad-hi”, as it is called in Arabic). For instance, the expression “He is good except that he is extravagant” is a simple example of “derogation in the guise of praise”. This concept is one of the stylistic theories of adorning human speech. In Arabic, the third of the three basic sciences of rhetoric referred to as Ilmul Badi’i deals with theories that expressively or impliedly seek to adorn speech. While homonyms (Jinas) and the concept of rhymes (Saja’u) belong to the expressive group of concepts, the non-expressive group includes “derogation in the guise of praise.”

It would be recalled that this writer wrote a piece on this same road four years ago. The piece which was titled “Oga Fashola, what’s the ‘sin’ of Nupe communities” appeared on this page in this same newspaper on Saturday April 8, 2017. In that piece, the history and the failed state of the road were modestly lamented. Today, the story has not significantly changed. Constructed in two sections by DTV and Gufanti construction companies under former President Shehu Shagari’s administration in 1980/81, the state of road is now beyond what words can express.

One wonders whether or not the communities suffering the consequences of this bad road have senators or members of the house of reps who should make a case with Oga Fashola to get the snail-pace repair of the road accelerated. May Allah touch the heart of those with a mandate to speak for or change the fate of this road, amin.

Attack on Fulani travelers;

Last Saturday’s killing of 25 Fulani travelers by suspected Irigwe youths in Jos, Plateau State, is condemnable in strongest terms. The travelers who were intercepted and killed along Gada Biyu-Rukuba road in Jos were returning from Bauchi after attending the annual prayer session (dhikr) organized by the renowned Tijaniyyah scholar, Shaykh Dahiru Usman Bauchi, to commemorate the beginning of the new Hijra year; 1443AH. While 50 of the travelers are still missing, 14 of them are receiving treatment in hospitals.

The Irigwe militia succeeded, last week, in thwarting the relative peace that residents of Plateau State have been enjoying under Governor Simon Bako Lalong’s administration because previous perpetrators of the same heinous crime were not summarily tried. For example, the case involving the killers of Major General Idris Alkali is still in court. Unless the law is allowed to take its full course on all militia groups in Plateau State, the long standing ethrrocentric and Islamophobic narratives in which non-indigenes and non-Muslims remain victims in every attack shall remain reoccurring decimal.

Besides our call on Governor Lalong to support security agencies in their search to rescue all the missing travelers, we also urge him to constitute a panel to fully investigate the attack with a view to prosecuting and sentencing all those found culpable. Compensation should be paid to the families of all those killed in the attack. We further urge Plateau State government to foot the medical bills of all persons injured in the attack. May Allah grant the souls of all the travelers killed in the attack eternal bliss, amin.