A fortnight ago, I was in Ondo state to
attend an event; that was the day the heavens chose to open up. The rainy
season seems to have started early this year, and whenever it rains, even
mother earth opens up to drink water from the skies, the heat wave of the dry
season abates, a certain balance is restored to the environment, man, animal
and nature are re-united in a silent cosmic communion. It didn’t just rain on
this particular day. It rained cats and dogs. On the first leg of the journey, I
had travelled to Akure through the Ibadan-Ilesha route and I felt this was a
particularly stressful road. By the time we got to Ikeji-Arakeji, my stomach
was tied in knots. I was so distressed I felt I needed sleeping tablets to
survive the rest of the journey. My limbs ached after more than five hours of a
journey that had become a trial and error experiment on crazily damaged roads.
I resolved that I would not take that route back. I also sympathized with
my friends from that part of the country who have to endure so much punishment
to travel from Lagos or wherever to their homes in the Northern part of
Yorubaland. Navigating one bump after another, jumping from one pothole into
another and having to manage all the dangers that lie in wait on the long road
to one’s destination is absolute nightmare. The Ife-Ilesha bypass, which used
to be so smooth has become really bad, it has fallen into shameful disrepair, a
signpost of poor maintenance and the poor quality of road construction, with
the contractors, gaining more than the people in the long run.
I
decided that the return journey would be through Ondo, Ore all the way to Ijebu
Ode and further down. A straight line, we are all told, is a shorter distance
between two points. I also felt we could save time having arrived at our
destination, rather late. So, on the
return leg of the journey we headed towards Ondo. And the rainfall began. It
was so heavy it rained all the way from that axis down to Ibadan and Ore, and
many houses in Ibadan, I later learnt, lost their aged, brownish, zinc roofs to
the accompanying storm and turbulence.
If you have ever travelled between Akure and Ore, you’d recall many
parts of the road that are so bushy, the trees and shrubs cantilever onto the
road. In places, trees even cast a shadow upon the road on both sides, evoking
images and feelings of rustic naturalness. On this day, nature was no longer an
aesthetic luxury, but a hindrance and a threat.
As the rains fell and the storms raged, many
trees were uprooted and they fell across the road. The rainfall had disturbed visibility and
slowed down our movement and as time passed, I became restless. I didn’t want
us to travel at night, but we were already on our way back and it looked like
nature was going to delay us. We eventually had to stop. Very heavy traffic had
built up ahead and for a while, we kept wondering what the situation was all
about.
In the midst of that rainfall, some people stepped out of their vehicles
and started walking ahead to find out the cause of the gridlock. They soon returned one by one, in twos and
threes, and as they did, some of them went to the boot of their vehicles and
brought out machetes: shining, well-sharpened, glistening machetes. In a matter
of minutes, more machetes had surfaced, with young, able men, wielding the
machetes and moving forward in the direction of the source of the
gridlock. Three trees had fallen across
the road, with the branches turning the entire road into a wall.
About
twenty minutes later, the men with the machetes began to return to their
vehicles, soaked wet from head to toe, but looking excited and pleased. They
had taken care of the nuisance of the fallen trees. With their machetes, they reduced
the trees to moveable parts, severed the branches and created enough space for
traffic to flow again. My driver was happy. He engaged some of the machete-wielding
men in paced conversation and they assured him they had taken care of the
problem. I watched as they returned their machetes to whence they took them
from. Gradually, the traffic began to flow again. It continued to rain.
We got to Ondo, and moved towards the Ondo-Ore road, about two hours of
travel time. We had done less than an hour
when again we ran into another traffic gridlock. Again, trees had fallen across
the road and blocked movement. I
wondered aloud if we would ever get home.
“Oga, e ma worry. People will sort it out.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry.”
And just as had happened previously,
drivers started opening up parts of their vehicles and brought out machetes.
The bus driver directly in front of us walked briskly to the boot of the
vehicle and pulled out about six machetes, which he gave out to some
volunteers, and together they marched, along with other machete-wielding folks,
towards the front as if they were going to war. I didn’t find it funny. I complained.
“Egunje, the way these people are bringing
out machetes, this road is very dangerous. Look at how people are brandishing
machetes.”
“E jo sir, e ma fi iyen sile. Leave that
matter, Oga. If these people don’t carry machetes, we would still be stranded
between Akure and Ondo. Which government
is going to help anybody cut any tree in this forest? But with those machetes,
we’d soon be free.”
“But a machete is a dangerous weapon.”
“But they have not used it to cut anybody’s
flesh. They are using it to make the road motorable. May we not see something
bad. What if somebody travels on this road at night and runs into a fallen tree
on the road? People have learnt to protect themselves.”
“The police should not allow people to
carry machetes.”
“It’s like you don’t know what is going on
sir. People carry guns. They carry other things. Ilu le. Country hard.”
“So, all those checkpoints. The policemen
don’t look out for dangerous weapons.”
“Police. Which police? Nigeria police?
Well, if they had checked and seized all these machetes, we would probably end
up sleeping in this jungle.”
“There are very serious security implications,”
I said.
“There is nothing. When people travel on
Nigerian roads regularly, they are prepared for anything, especially these
motorists. They know all the dangers that lie ahead and they are tired of
expecting government to perform any miracle.”
While we chatted, the volunteers again sorted out the problem. Four young men returning to their vehicles at
the back, scratched the road with their machetes, and attempted a mock dance as
they raised the machetes above their heads and crossed them mid-air. The traffic moved. Our journey continued. I
was uncomfortable still with the number of machetes on the road.
We had two more such delays before we got to a village close to Ore, and
at each point, the same story, but certainly not the same vehicles or
motorists, but as it were, it was as if every vehicle or motorist was armed
with machetes, to be called to service at the moment of need. I felt this was wrong. The least that either the state government or
the Federal government, even the affected local governments can do is to clear any
thick bush along this particular road, create necessary setbacks, make the
shoulders of the road less of a hindrance, and trim or remove all trees
cantilevering onto the road. The road between Akure and Ore is old, broken,
dilapidated, narrow, and even as the rainy season begins, nature poses an even
more serious threat.
As
we got closer to the next village, we encountered a few speed breakers, and the
driver slowed down to cross them. As he
did, first, second, we suddenly heard a loud crashing sound from behind. The driver and I were pushed forcefully
towards the windscreen, but the seat belts pulled us back, the books I had kept
on the back seat flew in all directions, the vehicle itself was propelled
forward. Another vehicle, running at high speed, and ignoring the speed bumps
had crashed into our vehicle. The accident didn’t make any sense
whatsoever.
It wasn’t yet dark, so the other motorist could not have claimed he didn’t
see the speed breakers. But it was as if something stood between that other
vehicle and ours to reduce the impact. The vehicle lost its entire front, from
the radiator, close to the windscreen. Water dripped from its radiator, broken
vehicle parts and glass shards littered the floor. Seeing the extent of the damage, I pitied the
motorist. He was travelling with his son and they both made a show of
apologizing and pretending to be sober by patting our vehicle and the damaged
bumper as if they were caressing a woman.
We
picked whatever pieces we could match together. I didn’t utter a word, even as
Tony Tetuila’s “You don hit my car…” played in my head. But other motorists on
both sides of the road who came along did not spare the man at all.
“What is this now, Mr Man? Were you
sleeping?”
“Is this man drunk? How can you run into
any vehicle with all these speed bumps here?”
“Stupid man!”
“Ki le le yi. You must make sure he repairs
your car for you.”
The man kept pacing up and down. I said nothing, as my driver started
giving the man an ad-hoc driving lesson. I thought it was pointless. Many
Nigerians driving on our roads never bothered to learn how to drive. It is in
fact a thing of pride for someone to tell you: “Nobody taught me how to drive.
I never went to any driving school. I
just took a car one day and I started driving it.” Ask the same person if he has a driver’s licence,
he will produce a valid one! There is also the large population of those who
drink and drive and nobody arrests them, those who have no regard for speed
limits or traffic regulations and the utterly impossible ones who refuse to
maintain their vehicles.
I looked up; something crossed my mind. A friend once told me that armed
robbers and kidnappers on Nigerian roads use all kinds of tricks to stop you
and carry out their evil plan. They could deliberately run into your vehicle
from behind, knowing you’d come out of the vehicle. They could throw an egg
targeting your windscreen and as the yolk spills onto your windscreen, you may
lose visibility if you try to clean it off, or an object with nails can be
placed on the road, to burst your tyres… I looked at the man and his son…they
didn’t look like kidnappers and armed robbers.
But how do kidnappers and armed robbers look? What if they had machetes
in their boot? I kept my eyes on the man. As each passing motorist hurled
expletives at him, I watched. Then someone suddenly called out my name from the
other side of the road. I saw the man who had hit our vehicle now moving
towards the back of his car… The image of people fetching machetes from their
boots flashed through my mind. I quickly jumped into the car and asked Egunje
to move.
We
got home very late. As we parked the car, the entire exhaust pipe suddenly
dropped onto the floor. The driver screamed and held his head with both hands.
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