To get on the road, any road at all in Nigeria is to risk death. It is to risk breathing one’s last with or without fiery flames.
To get on the road, any road at all in Nigeria is to risk attacks by those who set up their camps of deaths in Nigeria in a bid to promote their business of killing, maiming and abduction.
In the face of the irrefutable conclusion that many of Nigeria’s roads have become terribly unsafe, would it be unsafe to say that Nigeria’s unsafe roads provide a metaphor for the directionless journey the country has embarked upon since 1999, but especially since 2015?
Every day, in many parts of Nigeria, sirens wail, bearing in them the bodies of those slain on our roads, and bearing in their plaintive notes lamentations for the lives needlessly wasted on Nigeria’s roads.
People leave their loved ones at home, take to Nigerian roads to run simple errands and are instead taken to the mortuary, their bodies mangled beyond recognition and leaving their families heartbroken.
The many road accidents which occur in Nigeria almost on a daily basis claiming lives and limbs tell of just how much the country has failed to fix something as basic as its roads for many years now, and the priorities of a country that refuses to ensure that all those who hit its roads do so with clear eyes and the right mentality, not because Nigerians are inherently law-abiding but because they are in a country where the severity or lack thereof of the laws on those things bespeak just how much they matter.
On Tuesday, 22 November 2022, 44 persons died in separate road accidents in Bauchi and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.
According to the Federal Road Safety Commission, 37 persons were burnt beyond recognition when two Hummer buses and a golf saloon car collided and went up in flames near Jakana village in Bauchi State.
On the same day, within the Kwali Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, an accident involving a truck and a Toyota bus claimed 17 lives.
The causes of road accidents are usually identified as over speeding, bad roads, fatigue, drink-driving, and whatever else has been identified as a factor.
But no matter what it is, it is clear that something urgent must be done to check the rising number of fatalities that happen on Nigerian roads and confirm conclusively that the roads of Africa’s most populous country are anything but safe for use.
It appears there is something wrong with Nigeria’s roads and many of those who drive on them.
This being the case, those in charge must do more to ensure not just that the roads are kept in top shape, but that those who use them as drivers do so with safety as their priority.
If Nigeria is where it is today as a country, it is because there are many unnecessary and completely avoidable niggles that continue to hold it back. If the country is to leave its current spot it has to ensure that those niggles which seem insignificant but are anything but are checked.
Kene Obiezu, @kenobiezu
