Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Works and Housing, has proved himself a different kind of bloke from many of those with him in the federal cabinet. This has nothing to do with his characteristic contemplative mien or the quick interchange of a frown and a smile that often appear and disappear on his face in quick succession, depending on the matter at hand. It has to do with character.
In a government and, indeed, a society in dire need of believability and character, Fashola has successfully built for himself a recognized level of integrity, something that the government he serves can effectively tap for better public reckoning, if it so desires. It does not have to translate to assigning him more ministries than one head can carry, though.
Two full terms as governor and seven unbroken years as a ranking member of the federal cabinet and the ruling party, it is remarkably interesting that not a few Nigerians can say for sure if the man is a politician. Of course, being a ranking member of a ruling political party, he is, by definition, a politician. But then, Fashola always means what he says and almost always he delivers on his what he promises. Now, that is neither the definition nor the description of a politician, not in Nigeria, not anywhere.
It is not every day that you find the minister of works and housing in an expansive mood. Indeed, he usually comes across as something between a judge and a professor. Pensive. At a recent event in the domain of his ministry, however, statements credited to the minister were of a man in an upbeat mood. The event and its import did not escape attention, considering that, first, the man from Surulere, Lagos, is not known for being easily excited and, two, he was not playing politics or making the type of promises some of his colleagues make on a daily basis. He was rather giving account of his stewardship and delivering completed projects.
At an event in Enugu State marking the inauguration of the over 40-kilometre Nenwe-Oduma-Ishiagu-Mile 2 road, a major link between Enugu and Ebonyi states, the minister reportedly declared the event as marking the advent of his ministry’s fruition period, what he called a season of “completion and impact.”
In the words of the minister, “I am happy to reiterate that this (Enugu-Ebonyi link road) is the third of many more projects completion and handover our country will experience in the next few weeks as we enter what I call a season of completion and impact.”
The new road projects are coming on the heels of the handover by the minister and his team of the Sokoto-Tambuwal-Jega-Kontogora-Makera road, as well as the Vandeikya-Obudu Cattle Ranch road, all “within the last 10 days” gushed the minister.
For a country with no less than 195,000km road networks consisting of about 21 federal roads of varied extended stretches, the recovery and completion of the roads Fashola mentioned may not strike many as remarkable. Knowing what the status of the Nigerian highways has been over the years will help to put the import of the season of impact in perspective. And the person who is making the promise counts no less. Of course, there are other roads that are not yet ready.
The Enugu-Port Harcourt expressway, for instance, is still being recovered. Even at that, the experience on that road not too long ago found it in a much more pleasurable condition than has not been its lot for long, at least the Enugu-Umuahia stretch. The Lagos-Ibadan road is also being pursued with vigour. From all indications, there is great relief to expect from Fashola’s season of impact in road recovery and reconstruction across the country. And he does not play undue politics with his duties.
While the minister’s words and works give cause for hope and anticipated comfort, the reality of a country in the grips of disjointed policies and with a dismal record of abuse of public utilities still haunt. Even if Fashola recovers majority of the federal road networks that have collapsed over the years, it can only be a matter of time before the roads will succumb to unbearable weights once more.
A country that conveys virtually all its haulage by road cannot expect logically to sustain good roads for a reasonable length of time. To move heavy-duty items and sundry products straight from the wharf onto the road across the vast 923,768 square kilometres land mass of Nigeria is a recipe for regular collapse of roads.
This is where wishes trail Fashola’s dedicated work and season of completion. How so wonderful and meaningful it would have been if Nigeria had the presence of mind to develop a composite transportation system that established a healthy complementarity between road, rail and air transportation as many other countries do.
The road reconstructions and recovery that the Fashola-led Ministry of Works and Housing has been delivering would have had greater chances of serving the nation for many more years, if the roads were not abused and already condemned to the propsects of bearing such burdens as containers, articulated trucks and sundry overweighted loads that force the roads to buckle sooner or later. No road is cast in iron. Rails are.
Without prejudice to Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi’s commitment to the rail line into the Sahel region, which must go on, come what may, it remains a clear statement on why Nigeria is where it is and how it is at the moment that a Lagos-Onitsha-Port Harcourt rail line or a Lagos-Abuja-Kano rail line has not been properly seen by governments through the years as a matter of primary economic survival for the country rather than an issue for self-destructive politics. Meanwhile, containers and heavy-laden tankers continue to inflict damage on roads.
It is unbelievable, too, that, even with the continued dwindling of the common purse, which makes it difficult for government to meet the high demand for road maintenance, among other obligations, the need to re-design the country’s road network to align it with rail lines has not occurred to policymakers as urgent.
The imperative of a relay-transportation system in which rails carry the bulk of the haulage as far as possible and then roads complete the task for a shorter distance can only be ignored at great cost to the economy. The very practice of moving haulage from the wharf straight onto the road is almost an aberration, especially for a sizeable economy that is heavy in construction and commerce, not to talk of fuel haulage.
In more serious climes, what countries do is to conceptualize and commence such composite national transportation system projects in one government, thereafter every subsequent government that comes along does it own bit by stretching the lines and the roads further, until the full circle is completed. No single government is expected to own and complete such a project. But will that work in Nigeria?