Article published in The Nation Newspaper
18/11/2009
Congratulations, readers for forcing government to fix the CLOSED Benin Ore EXPRESSWAY. But disgracefully only 2 contractors for the 300km ie 150km each, instead of 10 contractors@30km. If one farmer can plough a field in 10 days , then 10 farmers can plough the field in 1 day, abi? This is a how NOT to address a national emergency. Tell them so! Will it be ready to prevent ‘Ember Months Deaths –Nov-Ember, Dec-Ember and Janu-Ember’? CAUTION: Two friends lost tyres on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway to Hell. Who is ‘Dropping Potholes’ to kill us? FRSC/Police should investigate digging a lethal pothole and setting up tyre or towing business near by –Candidates for ‘Nigerian Entrepreurship or SME Award’.
Road engineers must consider the cost of millions of extra lItres of petrol wasted while doubling back on so-called expressways within and outside the city. There are not enough flyovers costing Fellow Nigerians billions and millions of hours in needless cross and back travel bottlenecks. There is a need to cross over to the other side in case of a need to return home or at road closures due to the three Rs -Robberies, Riots, Religious revelries and also trucks at Ogere and Ore. The Oworonsoki- Ikorodu bridge is a real problem in emergencies. Nigerians cannot continue to drive blindly into a 20km go slow with no escape for a fault not of their making. Nigerian road engineers must design ‘EMERGENCY ESCAPE CROSSOVER POINTS’ and ‘turn back points’. Openable ‘Emergency Escape Crossover Points’ should be every five kilometres and ROAD DANGER SIGNS for 10 million potholes.
Our women fight AND DIE in the ‘MATERNITY WAR’ while the soldiers fight and die in the so-called ‘Real war’. Whether you die by a bullet and bomb saving the nation or as a woman in labour in a pool of your delivery blood giving birth to the nation, you are both really dead. A lost maternity mother is mourned less by the nation than a lost soldier. Many more women die than soldiers in the national service. The recent Rememberance Day Services worldwide remind us to look after soldiers better, but who looks after our pregnant women lining up to deliver but to sometimes die? Of course there are soldiers who pillaged for 30 years. However there are fine service personel, some of whom have died, but they get scant recognition, memorial or family compensation. Even the Military Cemetaries are neglected by comrades and country. Visit and be very disappointed by the military cemetaries –Atan in Yaba, Lagos and Jericho, Ibadan. Shamefully, we are so incompetent we cannot keep a graveyard presentable. Witness the disregard for the cenotaphs at Dugbe, Ibadan and nationwide. Take children and friends to read the names and thank them and God for those who died that we might live –even in the darkness of PHCN. Life is always better than death.
Most of the nation’s cenotaphs are shopping annexes. In Ibadan the cenotaph is kiosk support for cloth traders. Cenotaphs should be ‘Military No Trading Areas’ – rebranding. Read the cenotaph’s have real names of Fellow Nigerian ‘Officers and Men’ who died for you and perhaps you will view the real military, in better light than you view the ‘koboko wielders’, the Babangidas, Abachas and others who failed. Abroad Veterans Hospitals cater for veterans. Retired good military personnel should get support, as practiced worldwide and in Northern Nigeria where Retired Officers Associations are well funded from States with access to government influence. The Southern Govenments do not all hold their officers in such high esteem. Look at how they treat their ‘civilian Generals’ like Soyinka. The Southern Governments must empower their decommissioned army to continue to do ‘political’ battle, in a non-military way, for advantage. We do not seek the re-establishment of the military in any form or free handouts but better political and social use of a ‘Neglected Natural Resource-the ‘Good ex-military’ in Southern states. We ignore a resource trained at such a huge cost to the tax payer at our peril.
However a warning to the political class. We threaten wayward children and must threaten wayward politicians with the consequences of failure. Nigerian youth between 0 and 28 have never witnessed as adults a military government. That memory gap may translate into feelings against a political class which is so incompetent as to boast it is ‘not failing’. Yet 75-85% OF STUDENTS FAILED NECO AND WAEC, the Ore Benin Expressway is failure, Ogere is a failure and PHCN’s 6,000Mw is still a-mega failure. Our ‘NATIONAL SCHOOL LIBRARY POLICY’ where ‘common’ 7 million library books we cannot put in 70,000 schools is failure. ‘Common’ 10 million potholes we cannot fill leads to 35,000 deaths, loss of 175,000 litres of blood, 5+ tankers containing 33,000 litres of blood each, 700 Coaches full of dead Fellow Nigerians, and 350,000 injured Fellow Nigerians, 7,000 coachs per year-all failure. This is how many Olympic size Swimming pools full of blood from Nigeria’s road? These preventable tragedies are failures, not in the nuclear physics of space bound government but failure to provide for Fellow Nigerians –the primary purpose of politics. I am a teacher, a patriot, a Fellow Nigerian and a doctor, so I know that ‘What is failure is failure’. We can save Nigeria by 1-10-10 –but will we and who will-these politiican or the citizen –the Fellow Nigerian citizen? CountdownNigeria@50- 320 days continues.