From Cyriacus Nnaji, Lagos
Professor of Transport and Logistics at the Lagos State University (LASU) Professor Odewumi Samuel Gbadebo, has advocated that Nigeria should go back to the Garden of Eden through appropriate and well-planned Transportation policy.
Gbadebo took the position while speaking as the 99th Inaugural Lecturer at the institution’s main Campus in Ojo, Lagos on Tuesday, September 10, 2024.
The theme of the Lecture was “Walking Our Way Back to the Garden of Eden: Envisioning a Model of the Complete Metamorphosis of the Urban Transportation System Trajectory”
Speaking on what is needed to get the transport sector working, Gbadebo urged the Government to make available transport document that can be a guide for both current and incoming administrations. “Besides the road we want the policy document because without policy document you don’t know where you are going. Because there is no policy document that is why a government can abandon this, go into that, in the end we are not going anywhere. The road someone said he did three years ago, nobody maintains it and it will go into disrepair; the way we are developing transport is too disjointed, a Government will come, do a road, another Government will come, abandon that one, start another one, that is not the way transportation works.”
Prof Gbadebo while stating that road transport accounts for about 90% of mobility in the nation, added that there is no authority responsible for its activities. He therefore called on the government to act quickly and appropriately. “More importantly, road is accountable for 90% of mobility, yet there is nobody in charge, there is no authority. Nigeria Railway has NRA, Nigeria has NIMASA, but road is left as an orphan, nobody is in charge. How do you expect our transportation to function very well? When something is handling 90% then to coordinate it, you now break transport into almost seven units, somebody is handling land, that is Ministry of Transportation, and it is not even the one handling road construction, Ministry of Works is handling that, the Blue Economy is now handling international waters and NIWA is handling inner waters. Then NNPC is handling the pipelines but Road, simply arithmetic, something handling 90%, you know if you scored 90% in an exam it is super distinction, so if you get the road right then maybe other mode will just support it.”
Gbadebo who decried the nation’s disjointed and incrementalist development in the Transport sector, urged Nigerians to trek in order to be healthy. “We are beginning to be lazy, anybody that has time in his life, when they have walked, will discover that they are healthy for a longer period. Walking is one of the best forms of exercise, but society has neglected it, thinking that walking is for poor people, whereas the poor people that are healthy are better than rich people that are sick.”
He lamented that the mother earth is groaning resulting in fluky weather, and pandemics of various kinds because of the way man has handled it, adding that those who trek are not doing so because they are poor. He said that trekking brings good health. “So anybody that has to walk, don’t think it is poverty that makes you walk, try to walk, ask any medical doctor, walking is the best form of exercise you can do to get good health. It is not every time you stay from AC office to AC car, to the AC bedroom; look, you are softly killing yourself. And all of these, we have what we call carbon print on mother earth. The earth is groaning and that is why we are having all sorts of fluky whether, rainstorm today, earthquake tomorrow, and all sorts of things, the pandemic is coming because of the way we have handled the earth.”
In his recommendation, he agreed that no transportation mode can work effectively in the absence of security. He called on the government to employ retired security personnel, pay them and equip them to help in the fight against banditry. “You cannot be talking transport today without security. If a plane feels there is problem in the air it will not take off, if a car feels there are rubbish on the road, they will stop, so for transportation, which I profess, to function, there must be security, and the approaches they have been using is, today it is up, tomorrow, it is high time we got a new way of battling this insecurity, and what are the new way? We have retired Generals, retired Majors, retired Civil Defence, all of them, they handled weapons and they are staying in the communities.
“You are paying them retirement benefits ; if it is 10 you are given them, make it 20; give them weapons because you know you cannot rely on the Military to deal with these bandits, because once the military comes and scatter them, the military will go because the military is not spread all over the country. For instance, all the retired Generals in Ojo form a vanguard, we pay you this and we give you weapon; you will tackle these people, so they will always be there to deal with them. If you don’t do it, we just started hunger, because all these palliatives regime cannot take anybody anywhere, let the people be able to go to their farms, rather than call them and give them rice,” Gbadebo advocated.
The erudite Professor while appreciating Lagos State for job well done, called for the adoption of what he called a national non-motorised day starting with LASU, whereby people will pack their cars and move around and by so doing go back to the Garden of Eden experience. “Lagos is doing well. I mentioned Lagos because they are doing big projects, it is time to do inner roads, inner roads distribute traffic, we want Government to pay attention to inner recesses, because inner roads are traffic distributors whereas bigger roads are traffic collectors, they bring traffic to the roads and they push it to where they will discharge it, and they cause gridlock, these are some of our recommendations.
“So we want LASU to start with a day we declare as non-motorized day, you come, you park your car and you trek this campus throughout,” he said.
