John Adedayo used to be a diligent and punctual worker. For five years he left his home in the crowded Lagos suburb of Agbado-Ijaye at 5am every day, until the city’s crippling transport snarl-ups lost him his job.
Switching from bus to bus, the 40-year-old security guard would take three hours to cross Nigeria’s teeming commercial capital and arrive on time for work in the upscale Victoria Island district.
The 40 kilometre journey was frustrating, but John has five children to feed and a good job was hard to find in Lagos. Finding a house on Victoria Island would be far beyond his means. Last week the journey was particularly bad. John was held up for six hours in one of the city’s notorious traffic jams. He arrived at work to find a letter of dismissal waiting for him. His boss could not accept his excuses, as there is no end in sight for the chronic transport problems that threaten to choke Africa’s most populous city, home to some 15-million people.
”My boss simply asked me to go back home. I thought I was dreaming until he handed me the letter,” Adedayo said sadly. The United Nations expects Lagos to go on growing, and to become one of the world’s five biggest cities by 2005. By 2015 its population could hit 24-million.
But as it grows, it is slowing down. Its badly maintained roads are becoming choked with equally dilapidated mini-buses and fuel tankers, car-wrecks, police checkpoints and market traders. Officials estimate that there are only two million private cars in Lagos — far less than in a developed country city of similar size — but still its road network struggles to cater for them.
Many schemes to improve matters have failed in the past, but now the state government and the World Bank are coming together in a plan that might at last make a difference.
”We are ready to confront the transportation problems. Very soon, Lagosians will heave a sign of relief,” says Segun Ogundeji, a representative for the Lagos state transport ministry.
After much discussion, the World Bank and the state government have settled their differences over what is needed to begin to relieve the stress on Lagos roads.
The bank has put up loan of $100-million, to which the state will add 35-million and the private sector six, to fund a five year project.
A new agency, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority, will join the city’s alphabet soup of acronyms and oversee a plan to refurbish road networks and develop suburban railways.
One of the agency’s directors, Femi Egbeoluwa, said that there was still a $21-million funding shortfall, but that the state was ready to put their plan into action.
But the long delayed scheme only managed to get into gear after a lengthy disagreement over priorities between Lagos State and its international backers.
Lagos governor Bola Tinubu originally favoured a grandiose urban rapid transport system — dubbed Metroline — which would bring light trains into the heart of the city.
Originally mooted in 1979, the scheme was stifled by military governments, and only resurrected in 1999 when civilian rule returned.
But the World Bank has dismissed the notion as too ambitious, and insisted the city try instead to plug the pot-holes, redesign road layouts and repair dangerous bridges.
”The World Bank rejected the project because it is not cost-effective. It is not user-friendly. It is not affordable because people cannot pay for it and we were told to come up with other options,” said Egbeoluwa.
A feasibility study was commissioned and it recommended a multi-faceted approach to tackle the problem. ”We were told to look beyond one option (Metroline) and our study gave rise to the Lagos Urban Transport Project, with emphasis on road transport expansion and upgrading of the existing rail system to a suburban system”, he said.
In a city spread out around several islands and lagoons, where traffic bunches up around choke points on a few key bridges, water-borne transport will also be encouraged, he added.
Lagos residents will indeed heave a sigh of relief if the plan works. If it doesn’t, Nigeria’s commercial hub could come shuddering to a halt. – Sapa-AFP