At collapsed bridge, Lagos youths risk their lives to save others
Ijeoma Ogwuegbu (ijogwuegbu@sunnewsonline.com)
Saturday, January 12, 2008

•Raymond and a female colleague Photo: Sun News Publishing

Living index

They shouldn’t be there. They could, like so many other youths of the community, like some of those they are helping, go about their lives like none of these concerns them. They are, after all, youths of Ilasamaja, a community where young people like themselves are more likely to become area boys than social volunteers. Rather than just go with the flow, these young people decided to buck the trend and risk their lives everyday just to protect other members of the larger Lagos community.

The incident that forced them to become heroes was the collapse, a couple of months ago, of part of the pedestrian bridge that goes across the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway at Ilasamaja bus-stop. The collapse happened in the night and even before morning; the bridge claimed its casualty when an okada rider, unaware of the state of the bridge, rode his bike, in the usual fashion, hoping to cross from the Sadiku side of the road to the Hassan side, using the smooth part of the bridge.

He had no chance of survival as he unknowingly took a plunge from what amounts to a two-storey building, head first, to the road below.

More casualties followed as people were forced to dash across the highway, trying to dodge cars coming at breakneck speed, driven by motorists who didn’t know the situation of the collapsed bridge and just thought the pedestrians were breaking the law. Many died, especially among the elderly and young children, who didn’t stand a chance against on-coming vehicles.

A calling
It was this state of affairs that led the Ilasamaja Youth Forum, led by its president, Abu Olawale Raymond, to decide that too many members of their community had been lost and something had to be done before more would perish. So they printed the name of their organization on lemon reflective jackets, picked up a few sticks and headed for the highway directly under the collapsed bridge, where they have remained everyday for weeks, trying to slow down traffic so pedestrians can cross safely.

Don’t be deceived, the job they have taken for themselves is a dangerous and very uncomfortable one. Just a ten-minute stint there and your eyes, nostrils and every exposed bit of skin is filled and covered with dust, making it difficult to breath. Imagine spending hours everyday on your feet, in sometimes searing heat, covered in dust, almost blind from the sand in your eyes, and sometimes having to dodge recalcitrant drivers who refuse to stop when you ask them to, and not expecting anything in return, just so that strangers can be safe.

Good idea from the internet
President of the organization, Abu Olawale Raymond, says they started the organization some nine months ago, with the aim of doing things like this in their community. Here, for once, is a good story about the internet and its effect on the youths in Nigeria.

“What happened was that we went to the internet,” Raymond said, in a chat with Saturday Sun, “and we saw stories about young people in different parts of the world, coming together to do things for their communities, and working with other organizations like the UN. We decided to come together and think of programmes that we could do that would benefit our community, as others have done. Since then, we have held seminars on HIV/AIDS, liberating the youths from poverty and we celebrated International World Youth Day on August 12, this year.

On environmental sanitation days, we visit areas in our community that we feel need cleaning and do what we can to clean up these areas.”

Raymond says they were forced to do something about helping people cross the highway when they realized that the casualty figure was getting higher by the day.

“From the first day when the bridge collapsed, we saw so many people dying just trying to get to their destination. We heard of a woman who saw her husband just a few minutes before and he told her he was going to Oshodi. Some minutes later, she received a phone call that he was dead, knocked down while trying to cross the expressway.

We felt this situation was bringing too much sorrow to the people in our community. These people who are dying are our people, our neighbours, some we know, some we don’t know, but people who we live with. So we called ourselves and decided we had to aid them in crossing the road, especially at the point where the bridge collapsed, just to reduce the number of casualties.”

Collaborators
Their work eventually brought the situation to the attention of the police, who sent a number of their officers to assist. Sometimes, LASTMA officials also pitch in. Some other youth organizations, including the Action Congress, youth wing of Ward F2, also joined forces with them, for what is essentially a full day’s work, everyday.

Raymond says they have to juggle the time they have to be able to work there, since most of their members are students and workers. He himself is a student at Lagos State University who also works.
“We resume everyday at 7 am, which is a very busy period because people are going to work and students are going to school, and then we work till 9 am. Then another group, that is the AC Youth Forum, continue from then on.

We ask some of our members who have to go to work in the morning to write letters to their companies to let them come to work a bit late so they can take part in the work. The students who don’t have lectures in the early morning also take part at that time. Those who can’t take part during the week help out at weekends. The others, who can stay the whole day, do so. We have about 19 members who do this work everyday.”

Challenges
They face several challenges, including overly hasty pedestrians and stubborn drivers who refuse to slow down. They sometimes have to stand in the middle of the road to stop cars, putting themselves right in the heat of the fire, so others can pass safely. A young student who dashes across the road before they are able to stop the cars escapes death by the whiskers, and then receives a flash from the whip of one of the IYF members for her trouble. She gets a dressing down from one of the female members of the group, who are as involved as their male counterparts.

While doing this work, they realized that there were parts of which they couldn’t do on their own. They decided to enlist the help of neighbourhood businesses to do some of them.

“We decided that we needed to erect some caution signs to slow motorists down to make our work easier. So we approached Oceanic Bank, that has a branch nearby and asked them to help us pay for these signs to be erected. They gladly agreed to do that and complied as promised.”

‘Not our job’
Semiu Odeyemi, another member of the group, seems weary as he speaks about what amounts to the government failing them.

“These are not what youths should be doing. We shouldn’t be the ones erecting signage. This is not our responsibility. We shouldn’t be putting ourselves in danger like this. This bridge is the responsibility of the government. The signs we are trying to get people to put here, these are the things government should have done immediately the bridge collapsed, if they were very attentive to the people. We are calling on the government to at least help in putting up signs until the bridge is fixed.”
Wasiu Soetan urged the government to come to the aid of the community by hastily repairing the bridge so life could get back to normal for them.

“We are asking government to come to our aid and do something about the bridge as soon as possible. This is a very dangerous situation and they are the only one that can save people’s lives here.”
As they modestly go about their work here without seeking remuneration of any kind, especially in this society now where almost every person has his/her hand out for something, these young people are demonstrating that they are the real leaders of the future and are indeed heroes.