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The Road to State Failure

October 13, 2009

In peacetime, with no bombs dropping from the sky and no Boko Haram militias knifing people to death, 70 Nigerians were burned to death on a road in Anambra. This mass death is symbolic because it seemed to have happened as Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftains hunkered together in Yar’Adua Centre to divine how to find a Governor for Anambra State short of going into a free and fair election. It seems that this divination required the blood of these ordinary wayfarers. But, the greater symbolism is that exactly what the PDP decided to do, (that is negate the peoples’ will through a spurious affirmation of Prof. Chukwuma Soludo) is what sustains this mass death. A little background to the death is important to understand this symbolism.


How did 70 Nigerians perish one day in road accident? The BBC reported that a fuel tanker ran into a pothole, collapsed and burst into flames. The flames burned passengers on three mini-buses besides the tanker. Now, this is not an ordinary pothole that fell a fuel tanker. It must be one of the numerous deep craters that dot Nigerian roads, especially roads in the South-east. Between 1999 and 2003, Chief Tony Anenih as Works Minister spent a whooping N400 billion to fix these roads. And yet they remain incinerators of the dreams and hopes of thousands citizens. Chief Anenih is the godfather and handler of Professor Soludo, the beneficiary of the divination that happened on the day of the carnage.
Seventy Nigerians dying like chickens in a season of cholera is a big indicator of state failure. Or rather, the real indicator of state failure is that this wastage did not merit the concern of any of the political personages tasked with protecting lives and property in Nigeria. In the reckoning of these personages, and of their ruling parties and ruling governments, this is just another item in the daily cocktail of how life has been reduced to the most brutish state of nature in Nigeria.

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Nigeria has one of the worst road fatalities in the world. Maybe more than Iraq and Afghanistan. The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has declared that most accidents in Nigeria result from the state of disrepair of Nigerian roads. The Federal Government has embraced infrastructural development as its cardinal programme. President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua signed one of the biggest infrastructure contracts in Nigerian history signalling that his administration understands the total collapse of infrastructure in the country. The envisaged massive public work is to put Nigeria on the most basic infrastructural standpoint for potential economic transformation. But some critics, drawing from hindsight, think it is just about 2011 election. After all, the huge road budget under Chief Anenih ended as electoral war-chest for the PDP in 2003.

The collapse of Nigerian roads and the carnages on them every day raise the spectre of a failing state. There is a theoretical relationship between road fatalities and state failure. If a country cannot guarantee life and free movement then it has failed fundamentally in its social responsibility. All failed states, for different reasons, fail to guarantee social stability and good enough social service. Seeing that our roads have become the incinerators of dreams and lives is Nigeria a failed state? Or more charitable, is Nigeria a failing state?

Debates continue but some important political leaders would not hear that we are even entertaining the notion that this beautiful and rich country could be on the road to failure. The President of Nigeria’s upper legislative house (Senate), the most distinguished Senator David Mark would sneer at such debate. He made it clear in his 49th Independence Anniversary press statement that Nigeria has achieved its potential. He slammed United States Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, for daring to question the good work militarists have done to make Nigeria the envy of great countries like the US.

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One thing about Mark is that he is not one of those lily-livered militarists who patronize civilian nonsense about democracy. He joins no issue on the special privilege of the military-serving or retired to continue to run this patrimony purchased from bloody civilians. He is a leading member of the cabal whose singular lack of vision and unbridled corruption entrench Nigeria in the rot. Mark is truculent and unashamed. He is also intelligent enough to know that a better Nigeria does not serve him better than this Nigeria. So, he lets everyone know we are doing fine and should be left alone.

Mark is not alone in gloating over what Nigeria has achieved. Everywhere in the political circuses the sound of mirth drowns the groins of the Nigerian people. Our leaders do not see or understand. Like revellers in the upper deck of a sinking ship they do not hear the wailings of distraught crewmen. Though 2007 took us to the precipice, we march on to 2011 with drunken swagger. To let these “leaders” continue in their wild revelry is a great disservice to them and the nation. We must get them out of the way to reverse the march to state failure.

The spate of freaky accidents on our roads contributes to parlous human development. We are not making any improvement in human development if our roads remain death-traps. A nation wracked by polio and HIV pandemics and high deaths from malaria and could not afford the most rudimentary supply of power for any meaningful economic activity is on the pack of country showing critical signs of failure. Add road mortalities to already increasing infant and maternal mortalities and you get a depressive index of human misery.

The challenge of making the roads safe may seem like a simple task until you map on it the political economy of corruption and political irresponsibility. Then you realize how far Nigeria has travelled on the road to failure.
May be it is a coincidence but it is just so fitting that the day the PDP chose Anenih’s ward as its flag bearer for the Anambra governorship election in defiance of the logic of democratic accountability the road in Anambra drank the blood of 70 innocent wayfarers.

• Dr. Amadi lives in Abuja

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