Your shock absorbers … or your life
Some of the articles I penned on the issue of accidents also described vividly what pedestrians pass through on a daily basis, especially in our so-called ‘model city’, Abuja. It was apparent that the so-called ‘master-plan’ of Abuja was a farce. Pedestrians daily dodge cars running at 180 kilometres per hour, right in residential areas, […]
Some of the articles I penned on the issue of accidents also described vividly what pedestrians pass through on a daily basis, especially in our so-called ‘model city’, Abuja. It was apparent that the so-called ‘master-plan’ of Abuja was a farce. Pedestrians daily dodge cars running at 180 kilometres per hour, right in residential areas, not to talk of the highways.
We have absolutely no value on life. We just don’t care who dies, so long as it’s not our kith and kin. To make matters worse, the latest thing now is the widening of Abuja’s highways (Airport and Kubwa Express Road), into 5-lane Autobahns. People say the contracts are all about getting enough bribes to prosecute 2011 elections. It seems that is what the idea is when you think about it. For the many reckless Nigerian drivers, it’s a license to kill.
For how can a people, who do not have the mentality of safety, and do not have an idea of how they should behave on the roads, who have consistently slaughtered themselves on two-lane roads, manage five lane roads? In spite of all the brouhaha that I alongside other writers raised on the issue of road accidents, the carnage still continues unabated on our roads. Whole families have perished, sometimes extended families of 20, 30 people, in single incidents. Are we simply accident-prone as a people?
Or are we mentally retarded as to be unable to manage contraptions like cars and trucks? Is it that our imagination fails us, as we are unable to envision the calamity that may result from over-speeding? Or is it our immersion into religion, with which we justify the losses of lives we suffer on the road – It is God’s wish… It is God’s doing… May Almighty God please save Nigerians from themselves.
It doesn’t matter that the suffering of Kubwa residents could be greatly reduced by assisting them with a couple of feeder-bridges, so that they don’t have to cross the dangerous express roads when going to and returning from work every morning. Anybody with conscience will weep for what goes on in the satellite towns of Kubwa, Karu, Mararaba and so on, each morning and night. I advised even El-Rufai to give them bridges, on this page, but he chose to plant flowers, to create parks and send multitudes packing to their villages. FRSC has decidedly refused to take up a campaign on ‘SPEED LIMITS’. To me that is all we need to enforce to reduce the killings that take place on our highways, to show that as a people we value the lives of every Nigerian. You are what you call yourself. If our people die by the droves on our ill-maintained highways, how can we ask the rest of the world to show us some dignity? We are not dignifying ourselves apparently.
This brings up the issue of speed-breakers, or bumps, erected on Abuja roads. I am seriously in support of this development, which has suffered serious criticisms from many quarters. Even Lagos-based The Nation newspaper had a scathing opinion about them. My take is that at the end of the day, such knee-jerk reaction (installing bumps), will somehow affect the mentality of the average Nigerian driver, and rightly so, that every road is not to be sped on like a German Autobahn. Gradually, the average driver in Abuja will get it into his subconscious that he needs to slow down at intersections, if only to reduce the rude jolt that he, his car and his passengers will suffer, if he flies over the bumps.
I disagree that the bumps have caused more accidents. Let us face the truth. In the 78 odd dark spots reported in Abuja by the FRSC, accident rates have reduced. Arguments about the shape that the speed-breakers should take and the cost of installing them is secondary. Most people complain about the damage to their cars. Yes, their lovely cars. Those cars that they treat better than their children. Nigerians see car as status symbol, yet we are unable to produce the smallest tyre. I have invited over 10 foreigners of different extraction to this country, and all of them have been amazed at the density of exotic cars on our roads. No other country in the world can boast of what we have. So the concern of our people is about their ‘cars’, not their lives.
Of course I buy the argument that signs should be put in place to warn drivers of upcoming speed-breakers. In all this, nothing makes me happier about this development, than when I see the big office-holders siren-blaring convoys really slow down at those bumps. These were the real people that caused accidents in those intersections in the past. Now a clear deterrent to over-speeding has been put in place. No driver is born yet, who will bump ‘Oga’s’ head on the car roof by speeding through a bump.
Also the other major culprits on the road (rickety kabu-kabu and taxi-drivers, who are contracted by their ‘owners’ to ‘deliver’ daily), who have this mentality that they have nothing to lose and wouldn’t mind bashing your beautiful, ‘auto-base’ painted car, if only to drag you down to their level by engaging you in fisticuffs on the road, now know better. Many of them have seen their tyres roll off the hub and onto the streets, when they dive over those crazy bumps. Most roads in Europe carry speed limits of 40 -60 Kilometres per hour, seriously enforced. It’s either your car shock-absorbers… or your life. Choose one.