Fashola And The quid prod quo Of Our Roads -By Festus Adedayo

The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, last week, joined the list of government fat cows who exhibit crass disdain for the plight of their people. In a chat with State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Fashola said reports that the state of Nigerian roads was pitiable, was a mere hype. The minister, while maintaining that Nigerian roads were not in the kind of bad shape as often narrativized by the people, said this while asked to justify the huge amount of billions voted for construction of Nigerian roads yearly and the terrible state they still are. “The roads are not as bad as they are often portrayed. I know that this is going to be your headline, but the roads are not that bad”, he said.

Fashola’s speech infelicity found a corollary in an earlier gaffe from the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sani Nanono. Nanono had said that there was no hunger in Nigeria, contrary to the claims of the people and that food was very cheap to buy in Nigeria. He made this known while briefing the world as part of activities to mark the 2019 World Food Day in Abuja. He even said that the level of self-sufficiency Nigeria had attained was such that she would feed her neighbours without batting an eyelid.

“I think we are producing enough to feed ourselves. I think there is no hunger in Nigeria; there could be inconveniences. When people talk about hunger in this government, I just laugh. In this country, it is fairly cheap to buy food” he said.

That Fashola had joined this club of indiscretion is the most disheartening of the story. Lauded for his infrastructural strides as Lagos State governor for eight years, it was a big let-down that the minister could sound so removed, so insulated from the plight of the people. If he didn’t know, at a conservative estimate, 90 per cent of Nigerian roads are in very sorry states. That the roads are in very troubling states, becoming grooves where Nigerian blood are sacrificed almost every other hour, is not as worrisome as the fact that they have become veritable avenues for governors and ministers to siphon public money into indecipherable bottomless pits, some kind of Donald Trump’s quid pro quo, if you like, between the interests of their purses and the welfare of the people. Roads are constructed today and in a few months, they become craters. Nobody carries the can, nobody is queried and society lives happily ever thereafter.

Methinks these statements from those who are supposed to serve us are manifestations of the low estimation of these men of us and the disconnect they suddenly feel from us the moment they become Honourable this and Honourable that. These men don’t go to the market to buy foods but feast on government largesse, seldom travel on Nigerian roads but fly in choppers and jets to their destinations; their children don’t go to public schools but join their contemporaries in Ivy League universities in Europe and America; how then can they feel our plights?

The truth is that Nigerians are hungry, more than they have ever been and Nigerian roads are horrible, killing citizens daily. The earlier Fashola reversed from this barren road trodden by David Mark during the Ibrahim Babangida regime, the better for him. It is a road filled with craters, potholes and leads to acrimony from the people.