..:: AUTO REPORT AFRICA ::..
Related Articles
In this encounter with PEARL NGWAMA, road safety expert and founder of Safety Beyond Borders, Mr Patrick Adenusi, speaks on road users discipline in Nigeria, the performance of the Federal Road Safety Corps over the years, among others. Excerpts.
Has the road reconstruction/expansion in Lagos paid off in reducing traffic?
The traffic jam is not going to reduce; constructing roads and not reconstructing the minds of the motoring public will make little or no difference.
What exactly should be done?
They are upgrading the roads; they are expanding actually not building new roads; all they are doing is upgrading the roads. The congestion in Lagos is not inadequate roads but poor and indiscipline road users.
What will you say is responsible for the indiscipline of motorists in not maintaining lanes?
The maintenance of lanes is impossible because the government has refused to do the needful. First of all, reconstruction of road goes with the necessary road furniture but what we have are roads reconstructed without road furniture. The roads are constructed and there are no road markings and troad signs. I’s impossible to maintain a lane because there is nothing showing clearly the lanes. Not keeping to a lane makes our traffic chaotic and not keeping to a lane leads to a lot of waste in man-hour, fuel, wear and tear on the vehicle, wear and tear on the people and it freely distributes stress.
So, if you want to improve our travel time, the lanes must be marked and the motoring public must be made to comply with maintaining their lanes. Failing to do so will come with some measure of consequences.
Government thinks that the reason there is congestion is because we have more vehicles on the roads; that’s actually not true although it contributes to the reason for the congestion.
Orderliness is the magic wand required to improve traffic flow in Lagos and Nigeria at large. Our not maintaining lanes has multiplied the risk exposure the citizens face. God forbid, if there is a reason to evacuate Lagos as a result of a natural disaster or like the incident of bomb blast we had in Maryland in 2001 or a huge fire incident that requires that Lagos must be evacuated, the evacuation will not happen. Now that there is no threat we can’t maintain lanes and we can’t be orderly so if there’s any threat nobody is going anywhere.
So, government must of a necessity endeavour to take the bull by the horns to begin a mass education of the motoring public on lane discipline. That means the government must mark the roads.
The gridlock in Lagos of which lane indiscipline contributes a lot to is a huge waste of the inadequate funds people have. For example, Lagos Island to Ajah is not more than a 30-minute drive but most times it is done for two hours or more. If 5,000 vehicles are trapped in the traffic morning and evening and they use extra N1,000 fuel above what they should have normally spent N5m has wasted. At the end of five working days, that’s N25m; at the end of the month, it’s N100m and that is N1.2bn at the end of one year. You and I know that more than 5,000 vehicles are trapped on Lagos roads in traffic.
There are a lot of things to talk about on this, for example, the environmental pollution on our roads due to fumes released impact the roads; simply put, the citizens are dying in instalment.
Do you think the Nigerian Ports Authority’s e-call up system is deriving the necessary impact of alleviating gridlock on Apapa access roads and Lagos by extension?
I was part of those managing the Apapa traffic for three years during the construction of Wharf road. A major reason for the gridlock is that trucks that have no business in the port head for Apapa. What I’m saying is that one of the reasons you have trucks on Apapa axis is that majority of them are looking for business. They enter the roads even when they have not secured any business. All those times you used to see them on the bridge they were looking for business so they get engaged in the traffic.
If every transporter has their own truck parks and they advertise their services in a transport journal you’ll find that you won’t have trucks on our roads and the e-call up system will not even be a concern.
The secret is continuity. Going by the way things are done in this country, can the e-call up system be sustained? Like I said earlier traffic will be less if every truck owner has where to park the truck and advertise in the journal and when people need them, they contact them unlike now they enter the road soliciting for business.
Why is it difficult for the government penalise truckers that have trucks on the roads with no tangible reason?
It is because today it’s a free-for-all market. Government cannot suddenly wake up and say they want to sanction the motoring public. They have done little or nothing to really solve the problem. First is that the roads to the ports are in a sorry state except for now that it is being reconstructed. It became difficult for even businesses and residents of Apapa to have life because they had no access. The economy of Apapa crashed. So, the day government decides to do the right thing by proper enlightenment and not embracing cosmetics solutions, you will see a massive change in Apapa.
Motorists lament that LASTMA and other various government road traffic agents/agencies are basically out to extort. What is your view on this?
I don’t believe they are there to extort anybody. Many of the people that say they’re extorted had actually committed or violated one traffic rule or the other. So, if anybody feels they’re extorted government is the cause of the extortion because there is a constant conversation between the road and the motorists. Unfortunately, our roads are not speaking; they are dumb. The language of the road comes in the signs that tell you what you should do and what you should not do. With the absence of those signage and road markings, the motorists do what seem right to them.
The law enforcement agent knows that the motorists shouldn’t do what they did, though the signs are not there, they still apprehend them because it is expected that you as a motorist should know some basic things about motoring. Sadly, the motorists are ignorant, which is not an excuse in law.
Don’t you think that part of the problem is hinged on people not acquiring formal driving training before hitting the road?
To a large extent everybody that drives in Nigeria should read the Highway Code. So, if the motorists are conversant with the Nigerian Highway Code, with or without the road signs, they’ll know what to do. In essence, the motorists are still to be blamed.
What is your assessment of the performance of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) over three decades of its establishment?
They are doing well based on the available resources and tools. The Federal Government is the only one funding the FRSC and safety is everybody’s business. So companies should support the FRSC because if they’re properly equipped, they’ll perform better. They need more of patrol vehicles, ambulances, tow trucks, radar guns and breathalyzers. These are the various facilities they need to perform effectively. If the FRSC gets one per cent of what the state governments give to the police force in terms of support, they will function better.
- COURTESY: Nigeria Automotive Journalists Association Magazine (December 2021)
