Lagos to Onitsha Checkpoints & Traffic: Who will save us from this nightmare? - Ik Muo, PhD

"The gods are angry, a sacrifice MUST be performed and the white chalk is needed!" This is what a policemen, detailed to provide security along the Benin Bypass told me thrice, on Thursday, 8/8/19.  The man was a Yoruba man, who spoke a good dose of Igbo Language, which he claimed to have learnt while serving at the Alaba market, in Lagos. However, let me begin the story from the beginning. I had to go home for a thousand and one engagements, the key one being the Igbo-Ukwu 2019 Ili-ji (new yam) festival. On my entourage were my beloved, the Acting President of Igbo-Ukwu Development Union, and a driver I had hired to drive me down for that day (You see, the son of man is going down gradually and that was why the man who drove effortlessly from Enugu to Jos, to Gombe, to Maiduguri  Kano, Kaduna Abuja and back to Enugu) is now finding it difficult to drive from Lagos to the east). We had left Lagos around 5.30am and our EAT(Estimated Arrival Time), barring any traffic gridlock, was circa,12pm. However, the Nigerian Policemen were on duty! Between Ijebuode and Benin, we encountered more than 50 police roadblocks.  At a stage, it was so bad that you  while being harassed at roadblock X, you would notice roadblock X+1 about 500m away.

And each contingent would search the booth of the car, check your particulars, ask for your tinted permit and all that. The consequence was that despite the free flow of traffic, we got home around 3pm! And the extra 3 hours delay was due to the activities of the policemen who were searching for herdsmen in the boot of our car. And one of them was the man who demanded for white chalk with which to make sacrifices to the gods of Benin! Is that how the catch the herdsmen who emerge from the bush, strike and disappear?  Do the herdsmen wear red caps, drive along the express way and particularly on Sagamu-Benin Expressway?  How do stationery police teams, whom everybody knows where they are stationed, provide security? Why do policemen allow easy passage to unregistered vehicles who pay 200 per  checkpoint but ask those whose cars are duly  registered for documents I have not heard about since I started driving 36 years ago?  And which one is better: the policemen who stop, search, ask asinine questions and demand for partikolas via body language or soldiers who just block the road with logs of wood and watch as people struggle over the consequential artificial traffic? And back to my police friend, who made him a priest of Bini Kingdom and why must he demand for white chalk (nzu) for the sacrifice...along the expressway? . We have been measuring ease of doing business. It is time we start measuring ease of travelling because ease of travelling is also related to ease of doing business!  That was my experience on 8/8/19 as documented in the subtitle of my BusinessDay column, 15/8/19.

Other Matters:  Checkpoints, security and the ease of travelling. The main title however was9^th NASS; Sinators, horribles and an old peoples’ home!2 Since that day (8/8/19) it has become worse. When I travelled two weeks later, I could not make it to the east in one day; I had to sleep at one obscure corner of Asaba. Another towns man who traveled on 29/11/19, was only able to get to Onitsha at 2am, stayed at Chisco park for the rest of the night and paid a security fee of N200!

However, this is not a recent development. Over the years, I have bemoaned the traffic madness along the Lagos-Onitsha, which has always been caused by the bad roads, contractors without a human face or the Niger bridge war.  Early in 2011, I complained thus’ I drove down East with my domestic entourage and it was not a joyful experience. I encountered about 100 police toll gates between Lagos and Asaba; the Ore-Ofosu portion of the Sagamu-Benin expressway is no longer worthy to be called a road (probably, it was a road)  customs officers wanted me to explain why their counterparts collected Nx and not Nx+ as import duty on my car[which one concern me?]. We spent hours at the Asaba end of the Niger Bridge even though we got there before 12 noon!’(Ik Muo; Happy Christmas? Not Quite. BusinessDay, 4/1/11)’. In 2013, I spent 7 hours from Lagos to Asaba and another 7 hours from Asaba to Onitsha and asked:’ when will this end? When will one easily travel to the East? Why will our rogue-politicians continue to play politics with the second Niger Bridge even when the existing bridge is so weak that vehicles are now only allowed to ply it in a single-lane mode? How many man-hours were lost and what were the other socio economic costs of this unfortunate experience which has become a regular occurrence in recent times? And when will our people become a little bit more disciplined and patient whenever there is a contorted traffic? (Ik Muo, Lagos to Asaba,7 hours; Asaba to Onitsha,7 hours; BusinessDay,2/4/13)  and then this: ‘Sometimes in September this year, I left Olabisi Onabanjo University at 3pm, hoping to get to Lagos around 5pm  but I was on the road till 11pm! That day, I spent 3 hours at one spot in Shagamu. On 8/11/19, I came in from the East, got to IjebuOde around 11am but I could not get to Lagos until 4 hours later. Ijebu-Ode to Lagos ordinarily takes 1 hour. On 9/11/19, I left Kingsway Road Ikoyi around 8pm, got to Carter Bridge within 15 minutes but I was in traffic for 2 hours on Carter Bridge without covering up to 500 meters. Of late, moving into, out of or within Lagos has become an impossible task.( Ik Muo, If Lagos should run, BusinessDay, 14/11/19) and this was a follow up to an article of the same title I wrote in 2002.

 

Now, another compatriot, Tony Onyima,  a former Commissioner for Information in Anambra State has documented this Lagos-Onitsha traffic madness, this time occasioned by the several  tollgates on that route( Police, Customs, FRSC and Army, at times supported by local vigilantes) His study was empirical because he detailed the  outfit that mounted the road block, where they mounted it, when they did combined operations  He travelled from Lagos to the east on 27/11/19 and counted 60 tollgates. Yes, you heard right; SIXTY: Lagos to Ore-24(police,17; Customs,2, Army,2; combined operations3) Ore to Benin-20(police-12,army3, customs,1; combined operations5; Benin Bye-Pass to Onitsha:14( police9, army2, customs 2; combined,1). Ajebendale won the gold medal, with ‘9 tollgates’, followed by Ijebu axis( 5), Orilewo and Beninbypass( 4 each)  The soldiers cause the least offence apart from elongating the traffic snarl).  The policemen particularly enjoy it when they seize the car documents and the victims would be following them up and down the road, pleading. What offences did they commit? Many of them could not tell because what policemen at Point A would ask is quite different from what the policemen 200m down the road would ask. The only thing Mr Onyima did not capture was the amount extorted from the different drivers and passengers at different tollgates and which organization extorted more per capita! He also collaborated my data of 8/8/19, when I reported that we encountered more than 50 checkpoints between Ijebuode and Benin.

He concluded by asking how we would undertake our seasonal migration which would start in the next few days. The hottest topic for those who ply that route now is how to travel this Christmas. The number of these tollgates is so much and those manning these tollgates take delight in humiliating and psychologically torturing the drivers and their passengers. And while they torture some drivers, they hail others, especially those who would willingly spray them without being asked or those they are afraid might disrobe them. They also go to desperate and suicidal extent to arrest these vehicles!

And the IGP has not said anything of this scourge.  Surely, we need civilized, disciplined and coordinated security presence on that route but now, the weight of the pot is heavier than the weight of the water, with more emphasis on other matters!  And we are not at WAR!

And I ask again, WHEN will this stop? The man hours lost and the disruption of businesses and economic activities is so humongous, except that it has not been computed. Who will save us from this nightmarish menace? Our politicians barely travel by road and on the few occasions when they do, their siren blaring convoys would complicate the matter by their daredevilry. May be we should engage in civil disobedience but this may not work since the passengers have no union; they are travelling for different purposes, have different attitude towards  ‘settlement’ and are in diverse urgency mode. So, as Christmas draws nigh, what shall we do? By the way, I notice that there is no single checkpoint along the Lagos-Shagamu axis of this same road and that the Benin-Lagos route is free. Why???  Do we have more thieves, kidnappers and herdsmen on Shagamu-Benin route and do those thieves not ply Benin-Shagamu side of the road?

Meanwhile, cartoonists are having a swell time depicting the various scenarios

Ik Muo, PhD Department of Business Administration, OOU Ago-Iwoye