The Lagos Road Traffic Law

I alluded to the new Lagos State Road Traffic Law in my article “A law and order state” a few weeks back. In a recent interaction with the Lagos State attorney-general, Ade Ipaye, he asserted that “the law fundamentally goes beyond road traffic to issues of how we use our roads and the unacceptable road culture in Lagos; impact of road traffic behaviour on economic productivity; impact of road traffic culture on social relations and society as a whole” or words to the same effect. I agree with the honourable attorney-general and more! My personal view has always been that the way we manage traffic in Lagos affects our livelihoods, mobility, quality of life, economic productivity, mental and physical health, safety, environment and life expectancy, tourism prospects and security. Indeed, it fundamentally defines us as a people – the type of culture and civilisation we are trying to bequeath to our children, and whether we seek to build a society based on law and order. As Ade Ipaye argued, let’s examine where we are coming from and what unfortunately we have come to accept – a society in which the average citizen wakes up at 4am every working day and goes to bed around 11 o’clock every night essentially due to traffic constraints! That Citizen Ade, Olu or Ola leaves his or her home by 4.30-5am to escape excruciating traffic, yet spends the next two hours in traffic, arriving the office drained and exhausted. Those who leave their homes later than 6am will usually spend hours sitting in slow moving (or no moving) traffic and essentially go to the office to rest from their daily ordeal while dreading their inevitable return journey home. The impact on economic productivity is severe, and there is no doubt that traffic and road usage are significant contributing factors to low national productivity. There are many obstacles on the way – commercial motorcycles in their thousands (some statistics say millions, in Lagos State alone!) ridden by untrained, illiterate, often under-age riders weave in and out of traffic causing accidents and daily deaths and injury; bus drivers high on “paraga”, “ogogoro”, and, I heard a new one recently, “seven-seven”, drive recklessly and irresponsibly like mad men causing obstructions and scratching cars as they go; some guy in a hurry suddenly opts to drive against traffic, and as he gets away with it, hundreds other motorists follow his example leading to predictable gridlock, and everyone coming thereafter is condemned to spend one hour at the spot before the confusion tapers off! Meanwhile, as they wait, armed robbers on “okada” take advantage, robbing people as they are stuck immobile in traffic. During the day these robbers operate; at night, they have a field day! In a modern society, we accept all these and worse – we accept that motor parks should be places where alcohol and drugs are sold; indeed, we laugh and joke at the notion that virtually all bus drivers and their conductors are high on intoxicating substances, and yet we proceed to enter those same buses; we see people die and maimed every day from “okada” accidents, yet we act like it’s an unavoidable state of affairs; we see these “okadas”, despite the high accident rate, carry pregnant women and children or people carrying heavy luggage, yet we think society can or should be organised in this manner; street traders add hours to our travel time and we don’t complain – indeed, some of us buy meat, pepper, electronics, textiles and virtually all our household provisions in traffic! We struggle for right of way with “omolanke” and refuse cart pushers who inevitably scratch our cars and buses, but I guess we say “that’s life”! Some big man gets fed up with all the bedlam and seeks to insulate himself by equipping his car with a siren and patrol vehicle, with which he drives all of us off the road, and we say “that’s life”! Trailers park on one lane of a two-lane road, and that’s life? Windscreen wipers, often under-age children who should be in school, intimidate and blackmail us on the road, and that’s life! We hear that most robberies are now conducted on “okada”; we hear that the overwhelming proportion of injuries and fatalities reported at outpatient wards of general hospitals are caused by “okadas” and “that’s life”? What type of people are we? What type of society and culture are we trying to create? What civilisation is this that we are willing to live in? And then people focus on the punishments! I have a friend who has lived in Canada until recently and yet complains about the punishment for one-way driving. Have you ever seen someone drive against traffic in Canada, United Kingdom, USA, Ghana, or South Africa? If someone does, he would clearly be presumed to be insane. What is inevitable about such behaviour that all we complain about is the punishment? Why should we condone drunk and or reckless driving in spite of the high price that society pays in economic and social costs? Why should we accept road behaviour that would be inconceivable in other parts of the world? Why should we keep talking about the good things in other societies when we are unwilling to pay the price they paid, and still pay?