By Busuyi Mekusi

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Roads are simply ways that are used to move from one place to another. While some roads are clearly old, they were fashioned by people who must have toiled and sweated to break through the virginity that ordinarily portends natural resistance. Roads have various dimensions, in terms of nature, tenure and density. Pathways are commonly used by the lowly in any society, as they are left to irritations of morning-dewed vegetables. These wetted plants are unpleasant reminders of the pains that trailblazers face in the trajectory of new beginnings. Farmers are expected to be ‘kings’ but they have been severely impoverished in Nigeria by unstable farming climates, unregulated market and marauding herders and bandits. Good roads are some of the hallmarks of development across the world, with highways in many modern cities and towns parading spatial aesthetics, even as most roads in Nigeria are big eyesores.
Roads are human adaptation of earthworms/millipedes natural interactions with the earth. The earth, as believed by the Yoruba, and magnified by Niyi Osundare in his poetry, shaves its head with the hoe. Osundare has copiously entrenched the unique properties of the earth in his poems, to reinforce his love for the farm, and the environmental elements in his mountainous Ikere cradle, as found in the flora and fauna of the emerging city. As the earth gets increasingly pressurised by human activities, both Wole Soyinka and Ben Okri have, through presaging, interrogated ‘the road’ that swallows travelers anytime it is famished. While some roads are to a safe destination, others are to death, as found in the cases of South Africans who over speed on their many dedicated well-built roads. This is without saying that most Nigeria roads seem to lead nowhere. Notwithstanding the scanty presence of construction workers and visible mounting of SUKUK billboards, the longstanding-bad-natured Agbara-Badagry-Seme road has remained an international show of shame, with the slow-paced reconstruction creating swamps on the space designated as the road. Another negative commentary to the parlous road is the heavy presence of uniformed personnel who mount road blocks to share out of the ‘continental cake’ being brought in from the neighbouring Republic of Benin.
The 12-point agenda by the acting Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, was outwardly laudable, but inherently self-serving, especially when viewed against such ‘manifestoes’ from former IGPs. Just like the political class, public false impressions have been used repeatedly to sway people, and corruptly earn their support. If Baba’s 12-point agenda is taken to the crucible, it would most likely end up as cock and bull story. The agenda of the IGP is suggestive of the simulation that gets a new wine into an old bottle, with the possibility of a burst. Rhetorics are closely followed by the plausibility of platitudes to the unwise, as most Nigerians have been cast. However beautiful the 12-point agenda was, they are wrapped in palpable impossibilities, for reasons that include paucity of funds, negative corrupt old attitudes, the latter that is negating of positive new orientations. Among many others, IGP Baba had promised the “immediate dismantling of road blocks across the federation”, which is an immediate open acid test to the ‘manifestoes’ of the Sheriff. In all South West States, roads are still blocked by policemen who brutishly extort motorists, to the chagrin of conscientious road users, whose sensibilities get assaulted at will.
‘The road to Kigali’ is potently becoming a metaphor for Nigeria roads, in terms of the physical and psychical stealing and ‘licensed robbery’ being perpetuated by policemen who would block the most motoring part of the space they convert to ‘road block’, in order to slow road users down, and make escape from ‘scrutiny’ difficult, if not impossible. Nigeria unsafe highways are blessed with security personnel that appear more like licensed mindless lords. Checkpoints and roads blocks curiously present the ideals of a limited liability company, with negotiation undertaken, monies exchanging hands, and ‘change’ doled out, with total disregard for who the spectators are, not minding that extortions are great assaults to the sensibilities of private citizens who are equally road users. Impunity is Nigerians’ watchword! Road blocks are mostly twin partners to potholes that lead to traffic build-ups similar to that one would find on the way to heaven, or gates of the American Embassy. Most dishearteningly, some of these security personnel engage in casual talks to kill the precious time of road users. For some of them, they believe if they are exposed to hazards on the road, with little or no care, they too should satisfy their sense of worth, more so as they argue criminals do waste the precious times of road users too.
Nigeria Police is fast becoming a special branch of Beggars Association of Nigeria, with the viral video of the officer that begged a Spaniard biker for money accentuating the materially flirtatious attitudes of most officers of the force. At various times, poor remuneration, and high-placed corruption in the system have been advanced as reasons and excuses for corruptive behaviours by police personnel, just that these reasons are unacceptable to the level of considering that Nigerians of various callings too get deprived of their benefits, without having to resort to punishing others for the misdeeds of their exploiters. Most embarrassingly, apart from traffic wardens that deploy various means to beg for money at their duty posts, officers at even police headquarters cajole and patronise visitors to extract money from them, with such request for tips and patronage ending up as the glorification of criminals, often times. No doubt, the struggle for primitive accumulation of material things has foregrounded the baseness of the humanity of Nigerians. Blurring the line between criminals and rampaging police personnel was the recent case of three policemen that, at gunpoint, allegedly extorted the sum of N153, 000 from a student of the Lagos State University, Hezekiah Oluwaponmile. The #EndSARS protests were medicine after death for some reckless officers.
With police road blockages littering Nigeria roads, they have created inhibitions for road users, rather than for them to mitigate the endless insecurity of kidnapping and killing that have become familiar narratives. At another level, blocked roads also signify Nigeria’s wobbling journey to the future. The global health challenges, particularly the ‘quakes’ from India, has placed Nigeria as the anecdotal tailless cow who exists only in God’s firm keeping. With the reports of attempted burglary at the precinct of the Aso Villa being too close for comfort, the news was also a sermon on the mount for all Nigerians, whether to be, or not to be, in seeking an exit from Trump-invented ‘shithole’, and all that have ears must hear! With the visits of kidnappers to mosques and churches, we must remember that these desecrations of God’s houses show our guilt and gullibility. Presumably, God’s houses are filled with buyers and sellers, ‘merchants of venom’, that must be ejected, in the order of Jesus, for the preservation of sanctity. Amidst the insecurity that has started to negatively impact citizens, economic uncertainties have increased, with salaries paid in percentages, leaving in its trail overfed leaders and impoverished workers.
As part of IGP Baba’s overall determination to show seriousness, it is expedient to halt the senseless attacks on police formations and killings of police personnel in the South East and South South. The IGP must match words with actions and get ‘illegal’ roadblocks across the country to be dismantled, as mere rhetoric is old-fashioned in a distressed system like ours. He must pursue his 12-point agenda and deliver on them in the interest of all, and for sake of fidelity. ICT-driven policing is a necessity, as the old order cannot confront contemporary security challenges. The presidency must transcend the ‘shouting of its tigritude’ by dealing squarely with insecurity, as against the mouthed courage. Nigeria roads are physically and metaphorically rough and desperately in need of restoration. With Nigeria’s ‘blocked’ roads, most Nigerians are gravitating towards the Heavens gate. Happy Eid-El-Fitr, and Adieu, Pastor D!