Infrastructural Decay in South Western Nigeria – Prof. Jide Osuntokun
January 5th, 2013 posted by NigerianMuse // Categories: Nigeriawatch

I have a feeling that what I am going to write about the South Western part of Nigeria would be true of the entire country. But for clarity, it is better to begin from the particular to the general.

I live in Ibadan and in the Redemption Camp in Mowe, Ogun State and I commute between Lagos and Ibadan every week. I also travel regularly between Ibadan and Ado-Ekiti and between Akure and Ilesha. I have also had to travel for research purposes between Ibadan, Oyo, Ogbomosho and Ilorin. The only major axis of the South-west routes which I do not frequent is Lagos-Abeokuta road and Abeokuta-Ibadan road.

I had written in the past about the need to connect Sokoto with Badagry which was in the masterplan in road development in this country. If done, this would have relieved the Lagos, Ibadan, Ilorin axis considerably. I am also of the opinion that the Maiduguri-Calabar road needs to be developed in order to ease the transportation of goods from the coast to the North-east. I am also an avid supporter of the coastal route from Lagos going through Warri, Port-Harcourt to Calabar. If done, this will have the effect of the opening up vast areas along the coast for exploitation and development. That belt would provide all the paddy field necessary for the production of rice for the entire country. In short, a comprehensive road development of the country remains a necessary condition for economic development.

This is not rocket science; it is what anybody with some modicum of intelligence can understand. If done pari pasu with railway development, this country will be opened up for business. Until this is done, we are just wasting our time. It is a truism that a country that is not in permanent motion is stagnant. In advanced countries, there is usually an integration of all transportation grid involving air, sea, river, surface train, street train, underground train and road network. Anybody who has ever been to Western Europe and the United States would appreciate this point. This is why it is so sad that the only way we move around in Nigeria is by road transportation even though we have two major rivers, Benue and Niger, they are hardly used. Everybody is travelling by road and because of this, the rate of mortality and morbidity on our road is one of the highest in the world.

This preambular statement is an important background against which my discourse on the South-west will be placed. Whether for good or for bad, the major entry points into Nigeria is Lagos whether by air or by sea. Because of this and as a former capital of the country, Lagos remains the hub of transportation network in Nigeria. It does not matter where you live in the country, Lagos plays an important role in the lives of our people. Most of the goods coming into the country come through Lagos and most of the agricultural products exported out of the country goes through Lagos. At least 60% of the air traffic to and from Nigeria has Lagos has its departure or arrival point. It follows therefore that any serious government must keep the transportation lines to Lagos free all the time because every gridlock in terms of movement of goods and people undermines the economy.

This is why it is the height if idiocy that there is only one major road linking Lagos to the North and the East and this is the so called expressway from Lagos-Ibadan and Benin. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway built about 30years ago has collapsed because ab-initio this road was not built to carry the kind of loads it is carrying. Since 1999, this road has not been touched by the federal government. As if to rub salt into our injury the road was given to Bi-Courtney on concessionary basis. After three years, the concession has now been cancelled. We are not interested in the reasons for the cancellation, what interests this writer is the fact that thousands of souls have perished in the course of the three years the road was held hostage by Bi-Courtney.

It is surprising that the most important road in the country was used as an experiment and a guinea pig in somebody’s fanciful theory of privatization as the mode of economic development. As far as I know, there was no advertisement and no competition before the road was concessioned to the company that has proved unable to do the job. Nigerians, not only from the South-western part of the country but from everywhere are now victims of this arbitrariness. One of the things that amaze one in this country is the lack of scientific basis of policy formulation. Thus we have a situation where the Lagos-Ibadan road linking the South-west to the North is put on the same pedestal as any other road in the country just for the sake of federal character and geographical balance. We forget that this axis of Lagos-Ibadan-Oyo-Ogbomosho-Ilorin-Kaduna-Kano is where more than two-thirds of the Nigeria population lives. Development is about people, it is not about land. This is what our politicians and policy makers should understand. I am for equal and balanced development, for equitable share of development but it must be people based and people oriented. A situation where the money used in building 10 lane express road between Abuja Airport and Abuja city is freely allocated and disbursed while totally neglecting the centres of population calls into question whether planners in this country are sane or absolutely raving mad.

Some have suggested that there is a deliberate policy of neglect, isolation and marginalization of the South-west by this present Federal Government. There is a plausible case that can be made but I will refuse to make it. This is because since 1999 well before this government came into power, the South-west has suffered total abandonment and neglect. The Ibadan-Ilorin expressway was awarded for construction and we were told that funds had been sourced from ADB (African Development Bank). The road itself is less than 150km in fact Ibadan is almost equidistant from Lagos as it is from Ilorin. In these 14 years, it is only a stretch of about 25km that has been constructed on this highway. The state of the Lagos-Abeokuta highway awarded at the same time leaves much to be desired and the road stopped in Abeokuta instead of continuing to Ibadan. The Ibadan-Ife road that was scheduled to continue to Akure, the center of Cocoa production in Nigeria stopped abruptly after Ilesha and even this shortened form of the express road has virtually been abandoned. The Akure Ado-Ekiti road, Akure-Ilesha road, and the Osogbo, Iwo, Ibadan road suffered the same neglect as other roads in South-west part of Nigeria that are federal roads. The policy of neglect if not the policy of President Jonathan must be the policy of the PDP, a policy that started under Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.

As I stated, I would not want to blame President Jonathan for the neglect of the South-west even though the signs of marginalization are everywhere in road construction and in appointments. Whatever the case maybe, the cumulative decay of infrastructure in the South-west is on the watch of President Jonathan and he has to do something about it. We have a saying in my place that when a baby’s head is wrongly positioned on the back of his mother in the market, it is the duty of any old person to put the situation right. This is what I am doing. My credo is that; if any part of Nigeria is hurting, the whole country suffers greatly. What is good for the South-west would also be good for the South-east and for the much neglected North-east, a neglect that has bred the rebellion camouflaging under the rubric of Boko haram. A lot of injustice has been committed in this country and we need to start making things right for everybody. Redressing obvious neglect in one area, while abandonment and marginalizing other areas is not in the interest of the country. We should embrace the Jeremy Benthamite’s doctrine of ensuring the happiness of the greatest number of our people.

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20130105034211zg/nigeria-watch/infrastrucural-decay-in-south-western-nigeria/