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.
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 merchandized 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
economy 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. Small potholes that
were not quickly fixed grew into manholes. A journey that normally took one
hour now took three if you are lucky and four or five if you traveled when the
churches along the route held their crusades. Rather than doing 100 km/hr., you
are forced to slow down to a crawl, making you vulnerable to armed robbery
attacks on the expressway. The beautiful road of 1978 had become a complete
death trap and eyesore 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. It
was an open secret that every toll collector on that road owned a couple of
houses built with proceeds of those toll booths. I heard of an Inspector in the
police who quit the force to become a toll collector! It was that lucrative.
Collectors, collaborating with their supervisors, of course, printed their own
receipts and issued those to commuters. It was sad. You cannot understand how
sad it was unless you knew one or two people who were killed on that road due
to accidents caused, in part, by the terrible road condition.
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 in life but we don’t want to pay for it. But we all know that these
things don’t come cheap and they have to be paid for. In countries where
citizens have gotten used to paying for these services, the services have
gotten better. Take education for example: Nowhere in the United States is
tertiary education free. In some of the countries in the West (Britain and
Germany for example) where you may get university education without paying
out-of-pocket fees, there are all sorts of charges, levies, and taxes that the
citizens have to pay. These things don’t come free at all.
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 for
five days or more in California, there is a punishing late-fee that comes with
it. If you are late for 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 a natural disaster like an
earthquake or a tornado. But in Nigeria, we want an 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. Every Nigerian knows that the fees you pay
at the passport office are stolen by Immigration officials. The ones you pay at
the airports are stolen by airport officials. The fines you pay the FRSC
officials don’t get to government purse. The money you pay the electricity
company doesn’t get there. School authorities embezzle funds meant for the
upkeep of the schools. Governors shave off huge chunks of the revenues accruing
to the states, some of which are direct taxes citizens that have paid. So,
people have (rightfully) lost confidence in the workability of the Nigerian
system.
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. I like to see speed limit signs appropriate for every section
of the roads. I like to see FRSC officials patrol in automobiles and high-speed
motorcycles and some static with speed traps. I like to see these FRSC
officials equipped with Point of Sale (PoS) machines that can aid in their
collection of fines on the spot. I like to see roving towing trucks for all
sizes of vehicles so that we can quickly remove broken down vehicles before
they cause accidents. I like to see rest stops where commuters can rest if they
so wish. I like to see ambulance and firefighter locations. And I like to see
police stations at critical locations.
If
you put these things in place, and you plug all the potential loopholes that
toll collectors can use to steal, Nigerians will pay your toll fees. And they
will do so with smiles. We are not animals. We love good things too. We may
complain at first. But if we can see where our money is going, we will pay.
Look at Ghana and its electricity problem. In 2013 and 2014, the entire country
rationed electricity on a 12-on/12-off basis. One half of the country got
electricity for 12 hours while the other went into darkness for 12 hours. They
switched after 12 hours. But today, electricity is 99.9% stable across the
country. I have not heard my generator in almost a year, save for when the
maintenance guy services it. Yes, the cost of electricity went up by 400% and
people cried. Some workers’ union even threatened demonstrations. But
government embarked on an extensive sensitization campaign which helped douse
tensions. Now nobody complains about the high cost of electricity because they
know stable electricity costs money.
Ever
since I started using the Ft. McHenry and Inner Harbor underwater tunnels in
Baltimore, Maryland (in the U.S.) some 30 years ago, there had always been a
fee. Nobody complains about it. If you are south of Baltimore and you want to
go northward on your way to New York, your best bet is to use one of those
tunnels. Pay the fee and save yourself about one-hour wahala.
If you are taking the I-95 from Baltimore to New York, you will pay tolls like
five times. And the trip is just about four hours. If your flight lands at
Dulles Airport in Virginia and you really want to get to Washington DC in less than
one hour, your best bet is to get on RT 267. No other alternative gets you to
DC in less than three hours.
In
France, the use of most of the highways comes with tolls. Last summer, my wife
and I hit no fewer than seven (7) toll booths on the French section (A4 HWY) of
the four-hour drive from Kaiserslautern in Germany to Paris. In Austria, you
are required to purchase Vignette/Sticker which must be affixed to the front of
your vehicle in order to use their Autobahns (highways). We didn’t get one because
we didn’t know and we were slapped with a 200 Euros fine.
So,
you can see that Fashola is not pulling toll charges out of his buttocks. These
are necessary charges if we want to pay for the roads and bridges we are
building and maintain them to last forever. Remember that the Federal
government invited some private entities to invest in partnerships for the
purpose of raising funds to construct these new roads. Those private entities
have to be paid somehow. Nigerians will pay. They don’t mind paying. But
Nigerians know themselves and they know their leaders. They know their roguish
leaders will steal the proceeds from these toll booths…unless government
invests in foolproof measures to block them.
Abiodun
Ladepo writes from Ibadan,
Oyo State. You can reach him via Oluyole2@yahoo.com
Source: Sahara Reporters
