After visiting ‘Heaven’ in Orlando, Florida’s Disneyland, in the United States of America, Nigerian Fuji music exponent, late Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, came back alive to sing about it. But to go to the real heaven, ‘orun a’re m’abo,’ where nobody comes back alive, you only need to drive a little bit carelessly between the Sagamu-Interchange and Ibadan stretch of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway that is currently under repairs. It’s a direct way to heaven. Remedial work on the road between Lagos and Sagamu-Interchange is being handled by Julius Berger, reputed to be the biggest road construction company in Nigeria, while the stretch from Sagamu-Interchange and Ibadan is handled by Reynolds Construction Company. Even though one should expect some degree of differences in the workmanship of both construction companies, it is however baffling that the design of one stretch of the road seems to be different from the other. It appears that the Lagos to Sagamu-Interchange portion has more lanes than that from Sagamu-Interchange to Ibadan. But the scarier part is that, while it is not yet quite clear what Julius Berger would put in the middle of its own stretch, to separate vehicles coming from the opposite direction, (one can see some movable, and therefore, probably temporary barriers, though), it is obvious that RCC is constructing gutters in the middle of its portion. Someone suggested that the gutter is necessary because the topography and soil of the road, from Ogere town onward to Ibadan, is prone to erosion. One would have thought that they’d put the gutter at the outer ends of the road, but place a high barrier in the middle. This should prevent vehicles that lose control from crossing over, and running into oncoming vehicles on the opposite lanes of the dual carriageway. The gutter in the middle of the road readily received a likely speeding ‘gwongworo’ articulated vehicle in the early hours of Thursday, September 18, 2014. Nigerian kids of the 1960s and 1970s would remember that whenever a young man bought a motorbike in the neighbourhood, folk would snigger behind his back and say, “Olowo f’owo ra’ku,” the affluent has bought what would cause his death. This is because one can easily have an accident, and die on a motorbike, than in an automobile. And that is one of the reasons advanced by Governor Babatunde Fashola’s government for restricting the ‘okada’ (commercial motorbikes) to rural roads of Lagos State. Of course, members of Nigeria’s ‘bike pack’ or recreational bikers, led by ‘Area Fada’ Charley Boy Oputa, may not buy the argument that an automobile is necessarily safer than a motorbike. They may change their mind when they consider the death-trap-in-waiting on the 125 kilometre Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. This road, part of Arterial Route-A1, runs through Lagos, Ogun and Oyo states, and links Nigeria’s economic capital, Lagos, to the northern part of the country. It branches off at the Sagamu-Interchange to eastern Nigeria. It is the busiest, and freights the highest number of passengers and highest volume of cargo in Africa. Any accident that occurs on it therefore has dire import on the economy of Nigeria. Apart from the loss of irreplaceable lives, goods could be completely destroyed, diminished in quality or return huge loses as they get to their destinations later than required. Without the faux pas of gutters in its middle, the road has already claimed many lives. Yet the Nigerian state is paying for disaster in the form of a channel to run off water. The Federal Road Safety Corps recorded 775 deaths on this road between January 2011 and March 2012 — a period of just 15 months. This grim report resonates in ‘The Road,’ the dramatic satire by playwright and Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, wherein the road, any road, is presented as a harbinger of sudden death. But why would the Federal Government approve a median on one stretch, and then approve a gutter on the other stretch, of a continuous road? Why the inconsistency? By definition, an expressway is designed for fast motor traffic, usually with dual carriageway and only overhead crossings. In other words, an expressway allows drivers to move at a relatively higher speed. So the gutter on the Sagamu-Interchange and Ibadan portion of the road looks like somebody’s attempt to literally dig a hole for others. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is already a death trap; no one should further increase its capacity to kill people. If anyone thought that instead of a raised barrier, a gutter is a better option as median on that road, he needs to think again. A median is a visible demarcation to separate the two opposite sides of a dual carriageway. Its major purpose is to prevent head-on collision between vehicles approaching from opposite directions. But the gutter in place now seems designed to achieve just that. It is however, worrisome that stakeholders, like the FRSC, the Nigeria Police, Nigerian Medical Association, National Union of Road Transport Workers, Nigeria Transport Owners Association, and the civil society, have not identified this imminent danger, and raised hell in protest against it. Even the mass media, with constitutional responsibility to point out lapses in governance, has not thought it necessary to take its still and movie cameras to the site, and report back to Nigerians, the death that is waiting for them. But how RCC, a member of a construction consortium that spreads through West Africa, Central America, and Central Europe, came up with the idea of a gutter, instead of a barrier, in the middle of an expressway, is a puzzlement. Do you know that RCC is a successor company to Nigersol Construction Company Limited, the firm that built Obafemi Awolowo University campus, which is reputed to be the most beautiful and most functional campus in Nigeria? Two gentlemen have to answer to this good intention that is about to turn awry. The Federal Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen, is an architect and expert in construction management. He is currently running a PhD programme in Public Policy and Administration. A citation on him says he “specialises in public policies implementation, project conceptualisation, project management, and capacity building,” in addition to being “vast in technical audit and due diligence work for new infrastructure projects and existing infrastructure.” On the other hand, the Federal Director of Highways, South-West Zone, Kabiru Abdullahi, is a civil engineer, and former acting Director of Highways Construction and Rehabilitation. His citation reads that he supervised “the construction of the dualisation of Kaduna-Abuja Road project,” and was also in charge of “culverts construction along Shinkafi-Kaura Namoda Road.” Why didn’t he suggest culverts, which are channels for conveying water beneath a road, instead of the gutter in the middle of the road? An aphorism says that what will go bad, will eventually go bad. Lest government’s good intention attract condemnation, both the minister of works and the director of highways, South-West zone, may need to urgently visit the site, and halt the dangerous work that is going on. The Yoruba say, “Oosha b’oo le gbe mi, se mi b’oo ti ba mi,” a deity that won’t remedy my plight, shouldn’t compound it. Safety, must be the first consideration in road construction. If you lost your father on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, like this writer, you’ll know how it feels. MY ERROR: I have been informed that, contrary to my impression, Standard Chartered Bank of Nigeria has no association with Standard Bank of South Africa. Copyright PUNCH. All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH. Contact: editor@punchng posted on September 30, 2014 at 12:00AM Send an email to Joseph T. 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Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 23:53:12 +0000