SAVE THE FEW INFRASTRUCTURES WE STILL HAVE

I was at a friend’s house last week, we were playing FIFA12 on Playstation3 when PHCN struck, it was disappointing as usual but like every other Nigerian out there, it wasn’t a surprising development. So we packed up the game and decided to take a leisurely stroll.

While walking, we kept on highlighting the problems plaguing this nation with PHCN bearing a large chunk of the blame. We ended up going to the railway compound @ Alagomeji, Yaba (We have a mutual friend that stays there); Suddenly, I had a feeling of de’javu.

(I attended Lagos City College, Sabo Yaba in the mid-90s…. After school, we would go to the railway compound to play football (There were some standard footie pitches in the compound, most popular being Loco, we use to walk on the rail lines and play with the gravel scattered all over it. Trains had strategic hours of moving and I remember we use to watch out for the 4pm train, the ear-rending horn & the churning of iron moving in iron *memories*)

Now it’s 2012, here I was again walking on these same rails & the thought flashed before me “These rails are still effective today”, I’m in my mid-late 20s’ and I know these rails were built before I was born, I thought of some signposts we used for target practice (throwing stones) back in the days & I tried to search for them, lo & behold, there they were, still as sturdy as ever. .. A few clicks and the NRC (Nigerian Railway Corporation) Wikipedia page was open on my blackberry, most of these rails were laid back in the 1970s and they are still as sturdy as they were then, even the signposts.

Now this got me thinking, some good people had great plans for this nation. True, the generation before ours failed us but let’s give credit when due. Some people actually had this vision of creating an alternative mode of transportation in the state, routes that encompassed 70% of the state were mapped out and the rails were laid but mismanagement and our usual nonchalance rendered it almost-useless. Nowadays, the traffic on Lagos roads can make a grown man cry, I personally spend like 5-6hrs out of a daily 24hrs on the road stuck in Lagos traffic.

Reading through Wikipedia, I realized the NRC has gone into bankruptcy more than once in the last 20years. This wonderful & effective mode of transportation (You have to see it) is just lying wasted and nobody has seen fit to revive it.

Yes, we don’t have as much as the developed countries but the few we do have are in deplorable conditions due to our inefficiency, our federal universities use to be the pride of Africa but it’s a different story now, mismanagement and lack of vision has taken its negative toll on our schools.(This is talk for another day).

I really hope and pray for this country to take its rightful place as a leading nation, I’m just more skeptical about the people.

Thanks