Opinion: Yuletide And Hassles Of Transportation

By Ayodele Omoniyi ( correspondent) 

Few seasons witness the mass movement of people, over a sustained long period, as Christmas time. Defiant of economic depression, the months adjacent to Christmas season, fatally dubbed as ember months, always have been characterised by millions of crisscrossing commuters in pursuit of business interests, social engagements, family reunions, and cultural reawakening or festivals.

With such widely varied purposes, the lively engagements of the Christmas period are non-partisan, non-regional and non-sectarian. No doubt, Yuletide is a busy period, for Christians and non-Christians, businessmen and tourists alike.

However, the high point of the heightened engagements of Christmas visibly climaxed in the hassles witnessed by the transport sector.

Whether by road, air or waterways, the transport sector being the hub of human traffic is almost bursting in the seam this time of the year. Therefore, governments and their agencies all over the world pay special attention to the transport sector to ensure its commuting worthiness, in terms of comfort and safety.

In Nigeria, apart from the hyped attention giving to the infrastructure of transportation, there is also an involvement of security and regulatory agencies to guarantee ease of movement for the travelling public. Such agencies include the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), the Police and their allied formations. With over 200,000-kilometre national road network out of which the federal government controls about 35,000-kilometre network, the officials of road safety agencies are often overworked. Inadequate and deplorable conditions of their operational facilities, including vehicles, are legendary and depressing.

Thus, this year’s Yuletide poses its peculiar challenges especially for commuters along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Shagamu-Benin Highway, Kaduna-Abuja Road.

This is because the ongoing construction works on these roads have made even routine travelling through them a harrowing experience.

Media reports have recorded transporters and commuters from Lagos to Ibadan spending more than eight hours on a journey that could have taken only two hours. Shagamu-Benin road could be worse.

Cheering news from other highways across Nigeria are in paucity. No thanks to diversions, merging of lanes, heavy equipment crossing roads at some construction sites and a host of other traffic obstacles.

All these, for millions of commuters, make the prospect of a Yuletide journey nightmarish.

The implications of obstructed and long delay during journeys are many. Having lost so much time in the gridlock, drivers tend to make up by becoming insufferably reckless resulting in accidents while sometimes, the accidents are occasioned by intolerably bad roads.

Men of the underworld are known to have taken advantage of inhibited or slowed traffic to wreak havoc on already frustrated commuters, hurting and maiming them in the violent onslaught to dispossess the travellers of their valuables.

It is therefore expedient that road blocked, lanes merged, or temporary imposed diversions should be opened for now, except where there are present risks in doing so.

The government should honour its promise to direct removal of such obstacles to allow free flow of traffic during the yuletide season. Construction companies should remove every conceivable hindrance to the ease of public transportation from major roads.

This is because there is a clear signal by now that traffic volume will go up astronomically this season.

Urban roads should not be ignored in the attempt to make all roads motorable. In Lagos metropolis, Apapa-Oshodi road is of immediate concern. This road has attained such notoriety for being the most unfriendly to transporters, commuters and the general public.

Federal Government’s directive to get the axis free for traffic was pursued to an extent until, probably, the agencies charged with the responsibility were frustrated out of the area. However, this season calls for a renewed effort to achieving the free Apapa road campaign.

Transporters and commuters too have roles to play in reducing the hassles of transportation this time of the year.

Night journeys should be reduced significantly. Recklessness should not be encouraged among drivers. They should avoid sleepless round trips and stay off hard substances and drinks.

Adequate maintenance should be given top priority, whether for private or public vehicles.

Yuletide season has no cult of bloodletting; most road disasters in the period are tied to avoidable human errors.

We wish all our esteemed readers a merry christmas and a happy new year in advance.

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