Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, is presently on its knees and crawling for reasons of its collapsed roads infrastructure that has invoked the ghost of Apapa on virtually every part of the city.
As a geographical expression, Apapa is just one of the 20 local government areas in Lagos. But beyond that, Apapa is an economic phenomenon. It is Nigeria’s premier port city and home to the two busiest seaports that account for over 70 percent of import and export activities in the country. Apapa economy is estimated at N20 billion a day.
Until lately when federal might brought back sanity to the port city, it was hell on earth with its degraded and suffocating environment arising from uncontrolled activities of rampaging trucks and other marine operators. The city was then defined by congestion and gridlock; it was a dreaded city avoided like leprosy by those who could.
Driving to Apapa at the time was considered a journey of ‘no return’. Motorists spent quality man-hour on all the routes to the port city, making it the hardest and most challenging destination in Lagos.
With the pouring rainfall, the entire Lagos has seemingly been rolled into Apapa and the residents, whether driving or commuting are groaning as they spend hours on end moving from Point A to Point B in the city.
“It is a crazy situation and it does not matter where you are coming from or where you are going to; the experience is just frustrating,” Gbenga Olowookere, a Lagos resident who lives in a Lagos suburb but works in Victoria Island, fumed after what he called a “tortuous journey” to work these days.
Olowookere explained that before the last few months when the roads became what they are today, he normally left home by 5am for work and got to his office one and half hours later. But these days with collapsed roads and frequent rainfall, it now takes him three to four hours to get to his office.
His case is not an isolated one as other residents share similar experiences. Rose Makere says she is confused because she does not know whether to drop the car and trek to work or to continue using the car and endure the pain. “Either way, it is pain in the neck. The bad roads have more or less legalized bad driving; people now drive just anyhow with little or no checks by traffic wardens,” Makere stated.
The situation on Lagos roads has deteriorated to a point where residents are frequently asking if they still have government in place. Except for a few locations like Ikoyi, Victoria Island and some parts of Lekki, nowhere is spared. “It is quite a struggle for people to drive or even trek,” Olowookere noted.
But the state government says it is constrained by the rains to carry out major repairs on the dilapidated roads which criss-cross the entire city. “We are aware that the roads are bad and people are suffering as a result of that,” Sanwo-Olu, the state governor, noted last Tuesday.
The governor, who spoke at Nigeria’s 59th Independence celebration programme hosted by Covenant Christian Centre in the Iganmu area of the state, assured that as soon as the rains gave way, government would start massive statewide roads rehabilitation.
Roads and transportation are major challenges in Lagos and understandably so. With a population estimated at 20 million and very high number of vehicles on a relatively small land mass, measuring 3,577 square kilometers which is about 0.4 percent of Nigeria’s estimated 923,768 square kilometers, the experience on Lagos roads is just given, moreso when no new roads are being constructed to match rising population and fast-paced urbanisation.
Contrary to expectations, Governor Sanwo-Olu and his government have spent the last five months of coming to power watching the weather. “Listening to Sanwo-Olu and his deputy, Femi Hamzat, during their campaign, one thought Lagos finest moment had come in the area of infrastructure. But what we have seen of the duo so far does not excite any hope,” Dipeolu Solomon, a lawyer, told BusinessDay.
“Agreed that the rains are here, Sanwo-Olu should have demonstrated readiness to bring sanity on Lagos roads by enforcing traffic rules; I believe that non-compliance to traffic rules contributes to the chaos and pain that define our daily experiences on Lagos roads, even in areas one would not ordinarily expect such,” he added.
Sanwo-Olu as governorship candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) promised Lagosians that his government would build an inter-modal transport system by integrating road, rail and water transportation in Lagos to solve the problem of commuting within the metropolis.
“We will move very fast to complete the ongoing Blue Line rail project from Okokomaiko-Marina and in the process aggressively prosecute the rehabilitation of Lagos Badagry Expressway; we will also explore the realization of the Red line from Agbado to Marina.
“In preparing for rehabilating various inner roads, the three Asphalt plants will be turned around and made ready to put people to work in order to make our roads motorable throughout the year”, he assured.
It may be yet early days, but it remains to be seen how all these will play out given the inertia in government circles.
CHUKA UROKO
