A Curious Type Of Transformation At NRC

By Akido Agenro

The political leadership in Nigeria has always found it difficult to grapple with the country’s huge population put at 170 million to the extent that the prisons in the country are over crowded with most of the prisoners being awaiting trial inmates. In the same vein educational institutions as well as hospitals are inadequate, ill-equipped and understaffed to the effect that most public schools are over crowded even when many children of school age are roaming the streets. A lot of Nigerian children are constrained to learn under deplorable condition including under trees, in makeshift classrooms or old and dilapidated structures, thus exposing them to danger.

But one aspect of life where one finds the government’s failure to utilize the nation’s vast resources to improve the living standard of the people so noticeable is in its inability to provide regular electricity supply to the population. The power generation capacity has remained abysmally low, fluctuating between 3000 and 4000 mega watts since the past ten years despite assurances from successive administrations in Nigeria to bring it up to a level that guarantees at least five hours of electricity supply to all consumers daily. When the paltry 4000 mega watts is compared to the 40,000 generated in South Africa, 120,000mg in Brazil, 1000,000mg in China and 1.1 millionmg in the USA the disparity in the standard of life in these countries and here in Nigeria becomes obvious.

The inability of the government to manage the growing population has meant negative returns on all development indices- high child mortality rate, low school enrolment rate [as mentioned earlier], widespread poverty with more than 77% of the population living on less than $2 per day, high unemployment rate, acute housing shortage, severe water shortage, poor transport facilities etc. The army of the unemployed keeps rising by the day as more graduates join their ranks to an extent that a job placement for only one position attracts thousands of applications. A case in point is the Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise held 15th March, 2014 across the country to fill less than 500 vacant positions but which ended up attracting a crowd of more than 500,000 young men and women scrambling for the aptitude test form, culminating in the death of eight persons and several others sustaining injuries at the various stadia that served as venues to accommodate the huge candidates that expressed interest in the advertised positions.

However, there is no area of life where the common people find the government’s incapacity to manage the nation’s huge population more biting than the transport sub-sector. The desperate, despondent-looking and frustrated  faces of workers, traders and artisans waiting for nonexistent commuter buses at bus stops to convey them to their destinations in the major towns and cities in the country including the federal capital, Abuja during rush hours speaks volume of the hardship the commoners in Nigerians go through daily transiting from one point to another. This, coupled with the over crowding that characterizes train shuttles in both the intra city train in Lagos and the inter city train services with passengers hanging dangerously from all sides of the locomotive, power cab, guard van and the rooftop, portray the crisis afflicting the transport sector in Nigeria.

The hardship that members of the public suffer while commuting on train which has been the experience for some time now without any reprieve coming to them by way of procurement of additional wagons that would lengthen the trains thus making train ride a pleasurable experience rather than the pain that it is at the moment has remained a sore point that exposes the government’s soft underbelly. One is left to wonder if it will not take the type of media expose done on the Nigeria police College, Ikeja by Channels Television in 2012 to draw attention to the plight of rail commuters. It was this documentary that woke the powers that be to the deplorable condition in the dormitories, lecture halls and other training facilities in the police college, an institution that was established to nurture the minds, hearts and hand that would be custodians of the law and defenders of the rights of the people.

There is no denying the fact that a revelation of the deplorable state of affairs right from the railway stations that lack basic fixtures as reception, restaurant, public conveniences and lighting up to the dilapidated wagons that are jam-packed with passengers who occupy the toilets, racks, backrests and every conceivable space will certainly unsettle the Presidency in the same manner the x-ray on the police college did and elicit similar response that saw the college facilities rehabilitated and given the much sought after facelift after several years of neglect.

I witnessed an ugly spectacle at Oshodi, Lagos the other day when I got stranded on the way to Apapa, an incident that called to question the rationale behind the introduction of the new hi-tech train to the rail line by the Nigeria Railway Corporation [NRC] on the one hand and the position of the common man in the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration on the other hand. The bus queues were long and winding as the weary faces of men and women who had been worn out after standing in the morning sun for hours expressed their frustration at the state of affairs where the common man is abandoned to his burden without any form of succour coming from the government to ameliorate his condition.

The anxiety was palpable. Suddenly, there was a rush to the railway station when a locomotive announced its arrival, but to the disappointment of the people it turned out to be the government’s newly acquired exotic train, known as Diesel Multipurpose Units [DMU] inaugurated at Iddo Terminus, Lagos the previous day [Monday, 9th June 2014], by the Vice President of Nigeria, Mr. Namadi Sambo with fanfare, pomp and pageantry and to the admiration of the men and women who gathered to witness the ‘ground breaking’ ceremony, cheering and clapping throughout the launching. With the fare fixed at N750, it is several times higher than the N230 [an increase from N150 effective from that Tuesday] which the Nigeria Railway Corporation charges for the mass transit train [MTT] that runs from Ijoko to Iddo/Apapa. A closer look at the inside revealed only a handful of middle class men and women were on board its six air-conditioned wagons, the number of commuters that will conveniently size a high caliber bus, the type used for bus rapid transit [BRT] in Lagos State.

All the people gathered at the railway station looked with an admixture of admiration, frustration and bitterness as the new train rolled past them. 40 minutes later another train of the same model as the first arrived the station and like the one before it bore only a sprinkling of passengers. However, when the standard class mass train transit train [MTT] affordable to the multitude of low income earners arrived the station at Oshodi it was crammed to the brim that not a single passenger among the now anxious crowd could be admitted into its wagons, a situation that compelled the pack to wonder in their disappointment if the ordinary people ever counted in the calculation of policy makers in Nigeria.

The leadership’s aversion for the commoners’ interest as demonstrated by the NRC in this instance reminds one of the hilarious but now rested New Masquerade, the popular comedy serial aired on Nigeria Television Authority network in the 1980s in which Prince [Dr] Jegede Sokoya [the late Claude Eke] in his characteristic depiction of the Nigerian politician had suggested in one episode at a meeting with his fellow politicians that the poor people of this country should be loaded into trucks and dumped at the Bar Beach water [the Atlantic Ocean] to save the government from their perennial troubles.

  Curiously, the much trumpeted transformation agenda of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration has translated to negative returns for most the people that have come to depend on train to transit from one part of Lagos State to the other. Ordinarily, one would have expected the NRC authorities to be concerned with enhancing its capability of ferrying more people conveniently across the state and with minimum discomfort to commuters in an area that is globally acknowledged as one of the most densely populated cities in the world rather than the millions of naira which the transformation of the sector by way of the government procurement of the new air conditioned train would accomplish. This tendency is a marked departure from the popular democratic principle of the government’s obligation to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number in society.

Except that those who coined the term, transformation agenda, which one assumes is a political catchphrase to project the GEJ development strides in various sectors have a different idea in mind than the ordinary meaning of the word transformation that connotes improvement in facility/infrastructure for the uplift of the facility user, the expression does not apply in this particular instance. The Encarta Dictionary defines transformation as “Complete change, usually into something with an improved appearance or usefulness”. Taken together with the increase in fare from N150 to N230 that followed the launch of the DMU train, to the average Lagos train commuter this is a double tragedy. It appears from all indications, considering the preference accorded the DMU train, that the NRC is pursuing a policy of class distinction or social stratification. It’s obvious the entire setup is orchestrated to exclude the mass of the people from enjoying rail transportation.

 The best way out of the situation is for the NRC to detach a number of wagons from the DMU and have them attached to the MTT and form one train long enough to accommodate both the passengers who can afford the first class N750 fare along with the traditional standard mass transit train patrons, or in the alternative deploy the two DMU to the inter-state route pending such a time when the second defective line running from Ebute-metta Junction [EBJ]in Lagos to Ijoko in Ogun State, disused since the past ten years is rehabilitated and made functional to enable the NRC run the two trains side by side to avoid one obstructing the other.

 Better still, the NRC may as well phase out the old wagons the corporation engages for MTT operation and have them replaced with the DMU and then introduce a new fare regime that is affordable to the common people in the spirit of genuine transformation.

The common man in Nigeria also deserves a certain level of comfort after all.

•Agenro is the Coordinator Democracy Orientation Movement, 18, James Street, Iju-Ishaga, Lagos.  Tel: 08055410516