When he was governor of Lagos State, Raji Fashola was notorious for collecting tolls. The joke used to be that if he constructed one foot of road, he would charge you for using it. So, when the news broke recently that he announced the return of tolls on Federal roads, some in my political orbit started to grumble. “Oh, this man will make us lose the election in 2019.” “Why do we want to add to the suffering of the common man now that we are getting ready for elections?” And so on and so forth.
But I am glad that we have someone who is not thinking about instantaneous, palliative measures that give us the sugar-effect of temporary joy and excitement which, in the long run, is inimical to our overall growth. We have someone who has not put dubious electoral victory ahead of service…functional and enlightened service…to the country.
Nigerians love the sound of free things. Everybody loves free things – free education; free electricity; free water; free TV and free transportation. We want good things of life but we don’t want to pay for them
When Obasanjo was about to leave office as military Head of State, he cut the tape to flag off the use of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in 1978. Boy! Were Nigerians happy about that road! If you were going to any part of Nigeria from Lagos, you had to go through that expressway. Those going to the Middle Belt, the East and the South-South (we didn’t use the word “South-South” in 1978) would use the road up to Shagamu, take the right turn and continue their journey.
Those going to the North would continue on to Ibadan until the expressway terminated at Ojoo. Prior to the construction of that expressway, the alternatives were to take the dangerously winding Shagamu – Ijebu-Ode-Lagos or the Abeokuta-Sango-Ota-Lagos routes. Either of these routes added three to four hours to your trip. But once Obasanjo opened the 115 kilometers Lagos-Ibadan express, it only took on average one hour to get from Ibadan to Lagos. It was not only faster, it was safer too. And it was good for your overall health and the health of your vehicle.
To pay for that road, Obasanjo’s regime did what was done in all civilized countries. It installed three toll gates – one at the Lagos end; one at the Shagamu interchange; and one at the Ibadan end. Certainly, a stretch of road that busy, that important to the economic well-being of the country should be able to pay for itself and have more than enough left for routine maintenance, given the high volume of traffic on it. I mean…every merchandised shipped into Nigeria by sea landed in Lagos.
And if the merchandise was going to Nguru or Maiduguri or Port Harcourt, it went over that expressway. It was imperative that we maintained that road properly and expanded it as our population and economic grew. That was the natural order of planning followed by every forward-looking society where institutions exist as a continuum, even when governments change.
But within a few years, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway fell apart. The beautiful road of 1978 had become a complete death trap and eye sore by 1995. The government couldn’t do anything about it apart from the occasional patching of some of the gullies in the middle of it.
Most of the funds collected as tolls never made it to government coffers because the toll collectors stole them. Collectors, collaborating with their supervisors, of course, printed their own receipts and issued those to commuters. It was sad.
Nigerians love the sound of free things. Everybody loves free things – free education; free electricity; free water; free TV and free transportation. We want good things of life but we don’t want to pay for them. But we all know that these things don’t come cheap and they have to be paid for. In countries where citizens have got used to paying for these services, the services have got better. Take education for example: Nowhere in the United States is tertiary education free.
Take electricity for another example: I don’t care how poor you are in Britain, America or Germany; you will pay your electricity bill. If you are late by five days or more in California, there is a punishing late-fee that comes with it.
If you are late by more than one month in Maryland, your electricity supply will be disconnected. Of course, if you pay your bill on time, you may never experience electricity outage unless there is natural disaster like an earthquake or a tornado. But in Nigeria, we want uninterrupted supply of electricity, but we don’t want to pay for it. We watch our neighbor illegally tap electricity and we beg him to hook us up. We sabotage our own country. Then we complain about lack of electricity.
Our attitude of not wanting to pay for services is directly related to the ingrained corruption in our polity.
Nonetheless, I join all rational Nigerians in welcoming the re-introduction of tolls on our highways. In fact, we can start charging tolls on our bridges too. But I do so on the condition that government should first build great roads. By that, I mean roads wide enough for vehicles to ply safely, with lane markings that reflect at night and help keep drivers in their lanes; with effective road signs for all hazards, including dips, bends, steep hills, dangerous slopes, cattle and so on.
*Ladepo, a US-based Nigerian security expert and veteran journalist, can be reached through oluyole2@yahoo.com
