Okpara Williams says travelling at night along Nigeria’s roads is a dangerous affair: “You can never tell whether or not you will get to your destination alive.”
Nonetheless, night travel remains popular among traders and businessmen who are desperate to fit more appointments into their schedules. It is people like these that the World Health Organisation (WHO) hopes to make an impression on Wednesday April 7, during events to mark World Health Day. The theme of this year’s ceremonies is road safety.
For many Nigerians, daylight hours are too busy to spend on commuting. As a result, they use nights to travel between the various towns and cities where they conduct business — something that has the added advantage of helping them to save money that might otherwise have to be spent on hotel accommodation.
But, fatigue, poor visibility and bad roads have taken their toll in the form of accidents. One that left the country particularly shocked took place last September a few kilometres from the capital, Abuja.
The pile-up, which involved three passenger buses and a truck, occurred after a driver failed to notice a broken-down vehicle on the road. About 100 people lost their lives in the smash, many as a result of being burnt to death. Night travellers also run a greater risk of getting hijacked and killed by robbers.
According to the WHO, road accidents have become the second-greatest cause of death around the world for people aged five to 29, killing more than a million people annually and injuring up to 50-million more.
The United Nations agency also believes that accident fatalities could jump by 80% in developing and middle-income countries during the next 15 years if steps are not taken to address this situation.
It says that whereas car drivers and passengers in wealthy countries run the greatest risk of having an accident, it is pedestrians and commuters who use informal public transport that are in danger in other states. Cyclists and motorcyclists also face a risk in these countries.
In recent years, the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) in Nigeria has campaigned against night travel in a bid to cut down on road fatalities — although its efforts have yet to meet with success.
“It is difficult to cheat nature. Some drivers do not bother to rest,” says FRSC spokesperson Bisi Kazeem. The commission also fears that the use of drugs by drivers to combat fatigue has contributed to frequent accidents at night.
While statistics for night-time accidents are unavailable, they are believed to make up the lion’s share of crashes throughout the country. The FRSC’s records show that more than 7 000 Nigerians die annually in accidents and 26 000 others are injured in the smashes.
The commission says that casualties resulting from evening accidents are a source of particular concern because a lack of rescue and medical services at night prevents crash victims from receiving proper attention.
“If an accident occurs during the day, [a] rescue operation can take place — but this does not happen at night,” observes Ambo Indabawa, sector commander of the FRSC.
The commission has even spoken of wanting to introduce a ban on night travel — something that has drawn fire from the bus companies that have sprung up to cater for evening commuters.
Peter Uwazie of the Luxury Bus Owners Association of Nigeria says the best way to curb deaths on the highways at night is to improve the quality of roads and reduce the amount of traffic on them.
Others say that the absence of an effective train service in Nigeria has left people with little option but to travel by road, and that bus owners should not be made to pay for the government’s failure to implement a proper transportation policy.
For people like Emeka Asoanya — and thousands of others who converge on the rowdy bus stations in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, at night — evening travel is unlikely to stop any time soon.
“[A] night journey is used to save time. The time you would have wasted sleeping in your house, you are spending it sleeping in a bus, and travelling at the same time,” notes Asoanya, a trader from Eastern Nigeria.
Said Okpara Williams as he boarded a bus out of Lagos: “As I am travelling now, I am afraid. There is a lot of risk that night travellers do take, but sometimes we just have to ask God to take control until the expiration of our journey.” — IPS