Okada is taken off Lagos
roads; perhaps, tempo-
rarily; perhaps, perma-
nently. Nobody knows
yet. The Lagos State
Government says it is forever. Time
will tell. People are groaning; trekking
long distances and asking desperate
questions. The State commissioner
for Information and Strategy, Gbenga
Omotoso, has been struggling to pro-
vide answers to the hard questions on
behalf of the government. I don’t know
how close his answers are to being
satisfactory.
But let’s face it; Okada in Lagos is an
insult to Lagos. It is a metaphor of ata-
vism, a journey to the miserable age of
naivety. Forget its temporary comfort
of rapidity and pretend that it consti-
tutes no security risk; it is an eyesore in
a smart city like Lagos. Ironically, the
buses just rolled out by the Sanwo-olu
government as succour will serve
no end. Metroline is the long-term
answer; forbearance is the option for
short term. But is the state government
thinking along that line?
Cancelling the metroline project
was the biggest tragedy of the 80s.
Luckily, Buhari is in government now.
Sanwo-olu can go to him and demand
the resuscitation of the project. It will
be like the reparation which MKO, in
the late eighties, demanded for Africa
from our colonialists. He had argued
that Africa’s backwardness was due to
her historical experience of coloniza-
tion and insisted that the demand for
reparation was based on the trivet of
moral, historical and legal arguments.
A metroline in Lagos since 1983 would
have accelerated the state’s develop-
ment one hundred times over.
How can you cancel a project that
can ferry thousands of people within
minutes and opt for an okada which
carries only two passengers at a time?
In a state of about 20 million peo-
ple! That is ludicrous. Luckily Alhaji
Jakande is still very much around. He
can be consulted. I wrote on this on
March 31, 2018. The views still stand.
Here is it:
“It is a twist of fate that Mohammadu
Buhari who in 1985 cancelled a multi
million naira metroline project in
Lagos as military head of state had to
come to the same Lagos 33 years after
as civilian President to commission a
bus terminus. I could audibly hear the
hushed lamentation of Alhaji Lateef
Kayode Jakande who initiated the
metro project in 1983 as Lagos State
Governor. There is transportation
connection between the two schemes
but bus terminus is incomparable
to metro-scheme in terms of effect
and impact. Jakande’s lamentation,
one could guess, bordered strictly on
the unbridled celebration of relative
nothingness on Thursday by a cheated
state which ought to be bubbling now
in the reality of a super metro scheme.
You can’t cancel a big metro project in
a state and come back decades after to
commission a small bus terminus!
Buhari stopped the project two years
after its foundation was laid when
Jakande had projected 30 trains in
phases for the scheme from Marina to
Agege, through Oregun and Ikorodu,
carrying 88,000 passengers within
an hour and 2, 288, 000 in 16 hours.
Such number of passengers, by WHO’s
reckoning, was half the population of
Lagos at that time. Jakande believed
that 100 years after its completion, the
scheme would fetch his government
gratitude from appreciative Lago-
sians for its wisdom and effort to ease
transportation in Lagos. Sad that the
opportunity to thank him and his
aides never came!
However, we cannot crucify Buhari
now for doing what was in the charac-
ter of the military to do each time they
seized power. They were ever quick to
cancel all projects which they didn’t
understand, suspend the Constitution
of the country, promulgate laughable
decrees and rule by the decrees. They
were the wisest in the universe, they
always thought.
Today, Lagos prides itself not as a
mega city anymore but as a smart
city. But a smart city shouldn’t just
be celebrating bus termini, though
commendable; it should be working
towards having a metroline. That’s the
answer; the only one that can demys-
tify the impossible Lagos gridlock.
Buhari scrapped the Lagos metroline
as head of state; Buhari should bring it
back as President. It is worrisome that
civilian administrations after Jakande
didn’t think about the project which
by now would have put Nigeria on
world map and made Lagos people
happier. I am amazed that leaders
who supported Buhari to be president
in 2015 never thought of negotiating
the metroline issue with him. Politics
is about negotiation. Unfortunately,
political leaders don’t see beyond
their small circles. They consult rarely,
assuming that the wisdom of state-
craft resides only in them and their
associates. Buhari will likely seek a
second term with the way he is going.
No problem. He is entitled to contest
as a Nigerian but let the Lagos State
APC make metroline resuscitation a
condition for supporting him. That’s
the way to go for a smart city.“
