A sign of the times

IT is a perfect sign of the times that the inferno that occurred in Lagos on Wednesday, May 7, which was caused by a fuel tanker and which led to the destruction of ten (six?. eight?) houses, and 21 vehicles on Ojelade street, and environs, has not resulted in any sense of outrage or feeling of shock. The national mood is so dour, no serious emergency shocks Nigerians anymore. It is as if as a people, the regularity of disaster in our lives is gradually robbing us of the capacity to feel. D?j? vu is becoming a definitive expression of the normative pattern of things. This capacity to accept the worst, and simply move on with life as if nothing has happened, is worth investigating as a sign of a crack in our collective, national character.

But d?j? vu? In the Fadeyi area of Lagos, at the end of the Ikorodu road stretch, a tanker, ferrying ethanol or some other dangerous inflammable liquid (no actual test has been carried out to confirm the exact substance) reportedly ran into the median (or was it a pole?) around 3 a.m. Something suddenly went out of control. The truck somersaulted. There was an explosion and fireballs engulfed the neighbourhood. The public, since then, has been reminded carefully that nobody died in the incident. But the damage is no less horrendous.

Twenty-one vehicles parked around the neighbourhood went up in flames; ten houses were razed; owners of some business concerns around the area arrived in the morning only to discover that all their investments had gone with the fire. Forty-eight hours later, the victims are the only ones counting their losses, nursing their pains and thanking God that they are lucky to be alive. In Nigeria, the burden of every tragic incident is reduced to the tell-tale self-consolation that "it could have been worse". But who will compensate those who lost their houses, vehicles and other investments? Nobody knows. Who is the driver of the tanker? Who is the owner? Has the driver been arrested and interrogated? No answers. Will any environmental impact assessment be carried out to investigate the effect of the spilled chemical substance, in the short run, or perhaps, in the long run, on the neighbourhood? That would be a miracle, were it to happen. Would any agency provide counseling for the victims, the hapless persons who were visited by tragedy at dawn? Most unlikely.

This is what happens all the time. In the last six months alone in Lagos, buildings have collapsed due to poor construction. Fire accidents have occurred. Last year, a petrol truck also exploded around the Ojuelegba area of Lagos, resulting in great tragedy. Daily, articulated vehicles bearing unlatched containers run into a ditch and throw their containers onto the road, or on the top of other vehicles, causing endless traffic gridlock, damaging lives and vehicles in the process. Nor is this regular jeremiad restricted to Lagos.

In Port Harcourt this week, according to a report in The Nation, "a driver and a female passenger were killed...following a petrol tanker fire at about midnight". In Kaduna state, in April 2007, there was also a similar incident involving a fuel tanker which fell across the road, eventually resulting in a conflagration. In Nigeria, there are no cyclones, typhoons or monsoons, no earthquakes decimating the population. And yet there are regular reports of disaster, all of which are almost entirely man-made. In terms of human attitude and the organization of our environment, it is as if there is death-wish in the air, even among ordinary Nigerians.

Take petrol tanker drivers or the drivers of similar vehicles, including heavy-duty articulated trucks which have taken over the roads. They are the physical manifestation of the failure of the country to work out over the years, a functional transportation system between depots, seaports, or dry ports and the hinterland. An excessive amount of baggage is ferried across Nigeria on a daily basis in trucks - a sign also of the country's dependence on foreign imports. These trucks are not restricted in any way. They can be found at all places, at every hour, on the highways, streets, and in residential neighbourhoods. They benefit from a national malady: the absence of control in the transport sector. The drivers, usually illiterate, I doubt if many of them ever received any driving lesson, have no regard for other road users and definitely human life means nothing to them. They call themselves "Kings of the Road". They drive recklessly and murderously. Traffic wardens and policemen who are supposed to call them to order and ensure that they do not constitute a security risk are negligent and ineffectual.

I am told these drivers are given money, by their employers, to bribe policemen. If you are unlucky and they run into your vehicle, there is no way they can be brought before the law without you the complainant being exposed to undue harassment by the system. A friend's car was once crushed by one of those vehicles and he had lodged a complaint with the police. The offending truck and driver were allowed to go. The complainant's car was impounded, "to enable the police conduct investigations", he was told. Three days later, the Divisional Police Officer had begun to suggest that our friend's car was a stolen vehicle. The menace of heavy-duty trucks on the roads is especially enervating. Some form of control is necessary. The authorities can insist that truck drivers should be subjected to regular psychiatric tests. Their employers must also ensure that they are certified fit to drive. The movement of articulated trucks should be restricted to specific routes and certain hours of the day; parking spaces should be created for them; parking rules should be defined and enforced.

Any truck bearing unlatched containers should be impounded and the owner of the truck, should be declared a public enemy. Whenever these containers obstruct traffic, either after having been carelessly discharged onto the main road, or tragically on top of other vehicles, as often happens, their owners should be penalized heavily and made to pick up the cost of damage. In the Fadeyi incident, the tanker driver was said to have run into a culvert at 3 a.m. He probably slept off. The price for his somnolence, or carelessness, as it were, is now represented by the burnt shells of homes, vehicles and business premises. Needless to add that most of the trucks on Nigerian roads are in varying states of disintegration: burnt out tyres, missing tyres in the cases of some of those trucks with sixteen tyres or so, engines which spew so much fume, driven at night, blocking the view of other motorists and driven by madmen with no care in the world, unlicensed and drunk drivers.

Who will the poor people of Ojelade Street, Fadeyi, Lagos now sue for damages? They probably would never know. Drivers of such vehicles usually disappear the same way owners of collapsed buildings melt into thin air. It is so easy for persons who have questions to answer before the law to disappear into thin air, or go underground in this country. At the moment, Nigerians are battling with the mystery of a missing aircraft. There is also the even more mysterious matter of the missing Senator whose whereabouts have suddenly become unknowable! The driver of the present truck in question reportedly took to his heels and escaped.

Something in the national character? Suicide is not a very popular choice among Nigerians, but there is a certain death-wish among the poor, which cannot be attributed to ignorance. A truck driver who is fully aware that he is holding in his custody, inflammable material of a high degree, nevertheless prefers to drive at high speed. In our various towns and cities, motorcyclists, the ubiquitous okada, wearing no form of protective helmet, usually race through the traffic, transporting not one passenger but three -on a motorcycle that is meant for at most, two persons. In places where there are pedestrian bridges, Nigerians ignore the bridges and choose to speed across the highway on foot. Many lives have been lost under such circumstances, victims of hit and run. And this has not discouraged the tempting of fate in such a suicidal manner.

People are told that it is dangerous to build houses under high-tension electricity cables still, there are houses along the entire stretch of those high-tension wires. HIV/AIDS kills, people are advised to embrace abstinence, or avoid unprotected sex. Still, many Nigerians insist on having multiple partners and they'd not hear a word of such piece of morality called "protected sex". People go out of their way to vandalise petrol pipelines; or when fuel tankers fall on the road, a crowd would soon organize itself to scoop fuel into all kinds of containers to be sold later for quick gain. The fact that petrol is a dangerous substance does not deter the people, and so in Jesse, Lagos, Kaduna and elsewhere, recently, many lives have been lost in the vent of explosions.

And yet to Nigerians, it is a familiar story nonetheless. In the Fadeyi incident, men of the Fire Service reportedly arrived late. They always do. And after a few minutes of intervention, their truck ran out of water. Ordinary people who had been roused from sleep, had to mobilize buckets of water, salt and detergents, to put out the inferno! "We thank God. It could have been worse", the people chorused, the morning after. Commenting on the Fire Service, the popular actor known as Kanran, one of the affected persons, told The Nigerian Tribune: "By the time they got here, they did not have water, the ones that had water did not have fuel, so we had to push the lorry with water down to the scene. Even when they got here, they were scared and could not climb the ladder to see what was wrong".

The poverty that assails this land is not necessarily the lack of cash, or the basic necessities of life, but the poverty of the mind. All things, big and small, begin in the human mind. There is a certain meanness of spirit that has overtaken the Nigerian space. Our sense of community, brotherhood and citizenship is disappearing, especially in the urban centres where daily, persons are treated to mean looks, insults and threats of assault by others, who they have never offended. Driving around the city of Lagos for example, is like a fencing match.

It is a miracle everyday to go out of the house and return in one piece. Human life is losing its value. Moral values have become old tales. Such incidents as the needless inferno in the Fadeyi area of Lagos help to remind us of the need for social renewal and a greater investment in human security (in a general sense). Both the driver and owner of the petrol tanker should be identified, and all the people who lost so much should be assisted by the government to seek redress in the court of law. It could have been worse...