By Remi Sonaiya
Much of last weekend, the final one in November 2015, was spent travelling to Minna from Ile-Ife, and back. I hadn’t travelled such a distance by road in quite a long while, and I found myself looking forward to reliving the experiences I had known and enjoyed on several previous occasions – the winding roads up and down the Ekiti hills; the sleepy small towns and villages along the way; crossing the bridge over the Niger at Lokoja, which has always been a favourite moment whenever I travelled up North; and watching the forests of the south-west give way to the savannah as one moved northward. However, the prospect of what I knew would be a very long trip filled me with some anxiety – how would the somewhat older body respond to the bumpy stretches which were sure to come? Everybody knows that the state of Nigerian roads is not in any way what it used to be.
There were, indeed, some very bad stretches, like the one between Omuo-Ekiti and Kabba, and it was probably the beating suffered by the car on that road that finally resulted in our losing a tire later as we approached our destination. Not that the road between Suleja and Minna was much better either; it was only as one got to the outskirts of the town that both the car and its passengers could have some respite. Thus, a journey that should not have lasted more than, say, eight hours ended up taking nothing less than twelve! I felt cheated, robbed of precious hours which could have been spent on more pleasant and profitable engagements. One had to be angry – how could our leaders have done so much harm to us? Now, several days later, that journey continues to take its toll on the body in back aches and pains in the joints and around the waist. This simply is unfair!
That is also why one is equally irked by the slow pace of the current administration – I keep saying to myself, as well as to anyone who would care to listen: We don’t have the luxury of time! The reconstruction of our dilapidated schools, hospitals and roads is such an apparently urgent task; one fails to understand why it took our president six months to appoint the people who would oversee those jobs for us. Or was it a cost-saving tactic on his part, to save six months of salaries and emoluments? Yes, I know, that is cynical. But that is what happens when citizens vote in leaders who promise to serve them but, sadly, over and over again fail to live up to their promises. A friend expressed even greater cynicism when we discussed recently: “Our leaders don’t have to mend our roads since they hardly travel on them; they don’t need to ensure that our hospitals are well-equipped since they don’t need them; our schools don’t have to be good since they don’t send their children there.” How sad to have to say this of people who are called leaders.
Actually, when the nation’s big men and women, the VIPs, need to travel on our roads, then government intervention suddenly becomes a speedy reality. Such is the case in Ile-Ife currently, where the terribly undulating surfaces of the roads around the Mayfair roundabout and some other areas of the town are being repaired with uncommon zeal in readiness for the expected influx of VIPs billed to witness the coronation of the newly elected Ooni, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, which is scheduled to hold on Monday, 7th December, 2015. It does not matter that those of us who live in the town have had to endure the discomfort of months, even years, of navigating those terrible roads; what matters is that the dignitaries who are coming on a single day’s visit cannot be subjected to a bumpy ride through the town. Some lives certainly have a lot more value than others!
I cannot help wondering: Where did we go wrong? How did things get to be so bad? How could the situation have been allowed to so deteriorate? Were there not even just a handful of individuals among the pack of apparently uncaring, thieving and avaricious individuals who have run our affairs these many decades who knew what was right and could stand up to ensure that it was done? How could the entire public service, or so it would seem, have conspired to so degrade our existence?
Commentators have frequently drawn attention to President Muhammadu Buhari’s “body language”, especially in respect of his tough stance on corruption. How does that help us tangibly? What we need now is not body language, but rather, very clear and specific actions and policies which will immediately begin to turn things around in the nation. The newly elected president of Tanzania, Mr. John Magufuli, has gone beyond body language; he has drastically cut government wastage in a variety of ways and is investing monies saved in upgrading roads, schools and hospitals. Among them: scrapping of expensive independence day celebrations; limiting his convoy and the number of people who accompany him on trips; drastic reduction of foreign travels; cancellation of tax exemptions and sitting allowances; etc. If we could just begin to see some of such steps being taken in our nation, then we would be convinced that the era of Change has truly dawned.
