“The command is doing a lot to find a permanent solution to the issue of the Long Bridge. Some of the hoodlums seized the opportunity of yesterday’s gridlock to attack motorists. Our men engaged the hoodlums in a shootout. We are combing under the bridge in case some of them died while escaping. The bridge is long. The robbers operate where they don’t see the police. We have combed under the bridge several times. We have arrested many there. Some have lost their lives in encounters with our men. We even facilitated the clearing of the slums under the bridge. If that place is illuminated, their activities will be reduced. We are doing our best to sanitise that place.”
Whether you are Nigerian or not, the passage above will give you a sense of how increasingly ungoverned many parts of Nigeria are becoming. You will get even more alarmed when you realise that the person quoted above is the spokesperson of the Ogun State Police Command, Abimbola Oyeyemi. You’ll recall that the Police is the organisation charged with the responsibility of enforcing the laws and seeing to the security of the civil populace. So, when such organisations express the level of helplessness suggested in the quote above, one, must worry.
You are likely to get even more anxious when you are told that the bridge in question lies between Lagos and Ogun States. These, without any fear of contradiction, are the commercial and industrial nerve centres for the county. In essence, that bridge provides an important thoroughfare on the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway as well as the Lagos-Sagamu-Benin expressway. Invariably, most people travelling by road from any part of the country into Lagos make use of the Long Bridge.
So, the gist is that the federal government of Nigeria has graciously embarked on the rehabilitation of the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway on which the Long Bridge lay. Even though the construction has gone on for about five years and is not likely to end for another year or two, Nigerians are in no position to complain. Such complaints would only suggest ingratitude to a government that is taking the rehabilitation of the road seriously, gone ahead to award contracts and is funding the same, as much as the national budget allows. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who use that road daily are therefore sentenced to eternal gratitude or only muffled complaints.
Government people, the contractors and their apologists would insist that temporary discomfort usually attends interventions aimed at ultimately long-lasting solutions like this and they are right. That is if we discount the lack of reasonable project management, which minimises the loss of man-hour and is an integral part of such constructions in any serious country in the world. However, if we concede to suggestions that users of the road should bear the temporary discomfort while it lasts, what do we say about the dangers that they get exposed to?
The situation on this ever-busy road is that construction is going on between Warewa, which is just about the foot of the Long bridge and the Magboro areas of the expressway. The construction firm recently concluded work on the inbound Lagos side of the road after six long months and immediately moved to the inbound Ibadan Lane. As a result, it created a counterflow, diverting all traffic unto the inbound Lagos Lane. Expectedly, this precipitates a traffic build-up that sometimes goes as far back as the middle of the Long bridge. Now, even in ordinary times, the Long bridge is one dreadful spot where criminals have dealt all sorts of evil on people. The activities of these hoodlums defy day or night.
When they don’t take advantage of car owners and commuters because of traffic congestion, they pounce on people who fall into the unlucky chance of a car breakdown on any part of the four-kilometre-long bridge! There have been countless stories of people who have, in addition to losing their belongings, suffered life-threatening cuts from machetes, knife stabs and even gun attacks on this bridge. On some occasions, people were said to have been thrown into the gorge in-between the bridge. This has gone on for years, but Nigeria has not found a permanent solution to the problem.
So, on Thursday, June 24, 2021, The PUNCH published a report with the headline; “One dead, vehicles vandalised as robbers attack motorists on Long Bridge.” The report indicated that one person was feared dead in an attack by hoodlums the previous night. It presented eyewitness accounts, which revealed that many commuters suffered various levels of injury while others abandoned their vehicles in the melee that was caused by the usual traffic build-up.
In explaining why law enforcement agencies have been unable to stop the incessant crime at this location, Oyeyemi spoke about several things that have been done and seem perplexed that results haven’t been significant. He however made one point that must make Nigerians wonder what is wrong with us as a country. In his words: “…If that place is illuminated, their activities will be reduced…”
So, you wonder, if the police understand that illuminating the Long Bridge, which is not more than a four-kilometre stretch could be a panacea to the activities of criminals, what is the Federal Ministry of Works or even the Ogun State Government waiting for all these years? Doesn’t the failure to do the needful indicate that government places little importance on the security and lives of millions of the people who use this road?
More importantly, the country is doing very little to prepare for the future. A couple of days back, former President Olusegun Obasanjo spoke about Nigeria’s unbridled population growth and how it might become a disadvantage. This is a reality that currently stares the country in the face. Hundreds of youths roam the streets, with unrestricted access to cheap drugs and governments at all levels pretend like nothing is happening.
It is now so bad that Nigeria is exporting some of these anti-social tendencies into other countries en masse. Earlier this month, opposing cultist groups from Nigeria were said to have engaged in a bloody clash that left more than twenty people dead in some parts of the United Arabs Emirates. Shortly after, the country reportedly suspended the issuance of employment visas to Nigerians, yet the country does not see any urgency in the situation with her youths and children.
There is another bridge between the Long Bridge and the Magboro community on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Tens of people from northern Nigeria and their children sleep, wake, defecate and have their meals under this bridge. As early as six a.m. in the morning, you will find three-year-old and four-year-old children, male and female, running after cars to solicit for alms, yet the police talk about having cleared slums from this area.
While it may be true that residents under this bridge do not currently constitute harm to anyone, it is not likely to continue to be so for long. Those children who are exposed to the elements day and night, who run after the cars of obviously more prosperous people some of who do not even bother to take a second look at them, will one day avenge this country’s neglect. And there is no other way they would do that than the language of the streets, which is the only thing they understand. This is where all the insurgencies, banditry and kidnappings Nigeria is grappling with came from, but we still have not learnt lessons.
