Impounding rickety vehicles

ACCORDING to a directive issued by the Federal Ministry of Transport (FMT), all vehicles adjudged to be rickety are to be impounded and prevented from plying the country’s highways. To implement this directive are the Nigeria Police, the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and the Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIOs). This operation is billed to start by the end of March, 2008.

WHILE it is not known what criteria the FMT gave to guide the three law enforcement agencies as to what passes for a rickety vehicle, it cannot be denied that even a minimum vehicle standard application will condemn the vast majority of vehicles on Nigerian roads as rickety. If the standard and quality of the vehicles allowed on the roads of the developed countries are applied in this directive, it is certain that up to 90 per cent of the vehicles currently plying Nigerian roads will be grounded.

THE stated reason by the FMT for this directive is to restore sanity to the roads in Nigeria and drastically reduce road accidents in the country. And this reason given by the FMT is not without empirical basis.

ACCORDING to the FRSC, old, rickety and badly maintained vehicles are the second largest cause of road accidents in Nigeria. It follows that any attempt to reduce the very high rates of carnage on Nigerian roads must address the problem of rickety vehicles on the roads.

DESIRABLE as this action is, it does appear, however, that it will create far more problems than it seeks to solve. Apart from this, given the problem of law enforcement in Nigeria, we feel certain that the directive will just not work.

THE questions that must be asked are: Do people own, drive or ride in rickety vehicles because they love to? Do rickety vehicles have a special attraction for Nigerians? The answer to these questions is no! It is obvious that the average Nigerian who is reputed to take special delight in luxury and comfort will undoubtedly choose to own, drive or ride in new, sleek, smooth and good vehicles, if he can afford to. The very fact that he owns, drives or rides in rickety vehicles reveals the disturbing reality of his poverty. In fact, one of the quick indices of improved material wealth in the life of most Nigerians is that they purchase new or relatively new vehicles. And this is for the fact that owning good cars is both an existential necessity and social display of good well-being.

BUT it is an incontestable fact that, indicated in the mass poverty (which makes the vast majority to own, drive and ride in rickety vehicles) is the economic and political mismanagement by governments at all levels in Nigeria. The corruption that pervades the land must also be counted as a key factor in any causal analysis of poverty in the country. It can be argued that it is the Nigerian State that makes her citizens poor, and that it is the impoverished condition of Nigerians that makes them to ride in rickety vehicles; therefore, making a threat to impound their vehicles is the same as punishing a victim for the crime committed against him. Beating a child and still insisting that he should not cry moves from the realm of discipline to that of wickedness.

BESIDES the injustice of this matter is the economic implication of this directive. The rickety vehicle has a whole lot of its own economics. Bad and hazardous as they are, they fill the vacuum created by the absence of efficient public transportation system everywhere in Nigeria. If the government succeeds in getting all rickety vehicles off the roads, how will the people commute to and fro their places of socio-economic existence?

AS it is well known, hundreds of thousand of Nigerians are directly employed by owning and driving the rickety vehicles to earn a living. In addition to these are the uncountable roadside mechanics, auto electricians, panel beaters, vulcanisers, among others, whose livelihood depends on the rickety vehicles on Nigerian roads. If the government impounded all the rickety vehicles, what are the alternative employment outlets it has created to accommodate this army of artisans? What implication will this have for the already terrible crime condition and anomie in Nigeria?

BESIDES all this is the truth that the directive just will not work. Given the acute corruption within and among the country’s law enforcement agencies, this directive is sure to be a great avenue for security officials to extort money from helpless motorists and enrich themselves. It is evident that this directive by the Federal Ministry of Transport is not well thought out. It neither can stand nor advance the cause of the common good.

futa’s brilliant engineers

A friend once called the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Professor Adebisi Balogun, “Bullet Ben.” He showed a gang of armed robbers a clean, streaking pair of heels. The robbers were stunned like Carl Lewis was in Seoul when Ben Johnson shattered the world record in the 100 metres.

BUT Johnson used steroid to strengthen his muscles and phenomenally increase his speed. Professor Balogun, in his own case, used the legal performance enhancing drug of self-preservation.

THE story of professor Balogun’s disappearing act was published in a newspaper. But Professor Balogun denied that he had been with his fellow vice chancellor and friend when he was attacked by robbers. He was generous enough not to say that his friend’s ordeal at the hands of the robbers must have led to his confusion about the people who were with him at the time of the attack.

There can also not be any truth in a recent newspaper story about Professor Balogun and his university. Professor Balogun heads a university of technology and the university was established 25 years ago.

The university is known for scholarship and not scandal. Some universities have gangs of vicious thugs, but FUTA, Professor Balogun’s university, has gangs of genius and circles of cultured people.

SO there were no gasps of surprise when Professor Balogun told visiting members of the Senate Committee on Education that his university was ranked number one among its science and technology peers by the National Universities Commission.

But Professor Balogun’s complaint that FUTA had not been connected to the national grid was shocking. Why should the best university of technology in the land, a university that is long in the tooth and should have the tools, complain about not having access to the extremely poor services of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria?

Vice Chancellor Balogun must have been misquoted. He must have said that the university did not need the PHCN, that the university’s brilliant lecturers and students designed and built the generators that adequately provide the university’s electricity needs and that barely literate artisans are not hired to repair the generators.