By Dele Momodu, journalist/publisher
Fellow
Nigerians, I made my first trip to Abuja in nearly two years yesterday
morning. Let me confess that Abuja is not one of my favourite cities.
The reasons are legion. I find the city too disorganised for a federal
capital territory that was built from scratch less than four decades
ago. For me, Abuja is a poor imitation and a tragic mimicry of Canberra
in Australia, where I'm told the original idea, concept and inspiration
came from. It lacks the superlative infrastructure of Brasilia in
Brazil, another purpose built capital city.
It even pales in
significance to the wondrous creation of the late Felix Houphouet-Boigny
of Cote D'Ivoire in Yamoussoukro. Abuja is a complete waste of
resources and a terrible return on investments. It is an eloquent
testimony to the stupendous decay that has eaten up the very fabric of
our existence. For the humongous spending on Abuja, what we deserve is
something close to a Dubai, Doha or the other nascent capital cities it
was meant to emulate but of which it is an unpalatable parody. But let’s
leave that matter for now.
I had parted company with that city
where the collective common wealth of Nigeria is shared with impunity
after the 2011 elections. I was not in the mood for the wheeling and
dealing that compels most people to ingratiate themselves in that sinful
system. I had resisted every temptation to invite me there for one
event or the other. To ensure my near-total severance with Abuja, I
promptly gave up my abode and evacuated my car to Lagos. I was
determined to prove some people wrong who believe life begins and ends
in Abuja.
I was not under any illusion that easy money resides
comfortably in a few precincts of Abuja but chose to live like a Tibetan
monk totally at peace with myself and my creator. I was tired of seeing
fake friends milling around every government in power and calling every
cow fat or skinny "My Big Brother" all in the name of looking for beef
to eat. I succeeded in snubbing the city for about 22 months without
missing, what is admittedly, its occasional giddiness.
Anyway, to
cut a long story short, I had compelling reasons to visit again, and
this time I was fully prepared for the journey. It reminded me of the
excitement I felt on my first trip to London. My planning was elaborate
and meticulous. I did not want to be caught up in the deceptiveness and
gentle mien of the city. Abuja must rank among the most expensive cities
in the world. Beyond that, you must wake up as early as 4a.m to board
the first flights out of Lagos if you must achieve anything meaningful
and return same day to Lagos. Otherwise, you may be forced to stay in
hotels and pay bills from $150 to $5,000 depending on your taste and the
size of your pocket.
It is a place where the Lords of the Manor
are never in a hurry and can easily help you turn your trip into an
Israelite’s journey before you're eventually left stranded and bruised.
Many have had to turn to Pastors and Imams and marabouts to help with
talismanic charms before approaching the big guns of Abuja for
appointments and contracts. This has been amply acted and portrayed in
Rita Dominic's rib-cracking movie, The Meeting, a tragi-comedy per
excellence.
Though I had slept at 2.30a.m, I did not waste my
Course 101 in Travels & Tourism: "Never leave home late for Abuja
because any eventuality can meet you on the way." By 6a.m on the dot, I
had deposited myself at the gates of MMA2. Say what you will, Dr Wale
Babalakin of Bi-Courtney still runs the best airport in Nigeria.
Everyone
by now knows me as a perpetual grumbler on the parlous state of our
so-called international airports but Dr Babalakin has managed to
maintain a decent structure which I hope the Federal Government can
replicate in other places through PPP rather than seeking to be Jack of
all trades and masters of none. By 6.45a.m, our flight was ready for
take-off.
While airborne, I had Abuja on my mind. This was
predicated on my knowledge of more functioning societies where the
fortunes of a nation can turn around positively in a matter of months.
For some inexplicable reasons, I started dreaming of a road paved with
beautiful trees and flowers with ten beautiful lanes criss-crossing one
another.
I don't think it was too much to even envision some
places in this magical city paved with gold and diamonds. I visualised a
totally transfigured city that made Dubai look a distant cousin by
comparison. But reality soon hit me where it hurts most. The road I left
two years ago in the benevolent hands of our ubiquitous Julius Berger
was still under perpetual construction. Though significant progress
seemed to have been made, that singular road has become an embarrassment
to right thinking people. I don't even want to contemplate how much it
would have gulped by now in reality and otherwise.
I noticed that
the road had succeeded in eliminating some of the horrendous vehicular
traffic until we got close to the Abuja gate where a new queue of
traffic has become a way of life. Kai, Nigerians can endure serious
hardships with no terminal dates in view, I soliloquised. My driver
assured me there was no problem on this occasion because the day before
it had stretched to over a kilometre. By which time I had tuned off
completely and psyched myself ready for a quantum of suffering in a land
I never trusted.
We
crawled for about 20 minutes at snail-speed and escaped to a more
glorious movement which took us past the under-utilised and
nearly-abandoned National Stadium. The driver was triumphant as he
rhapsodised about his earlier prediction that I had brought some good
luck to Abuja. May be it had escaped his mind that the original landlord
actually goes by the name Goodluck Jonathan. How then can a disloyal
visitor like me have a say in the matters of such magnitude and
importance.
I am reminded that in Lagos, our affable genial
President is now referred to as "Gridlock" Jonathan for the standstill
that he brings to our erstwhile, but still ever dependable, capital city
whenever he deigns to grace the existence of the poor locals with his
rampaging visitation.
We sped towards my hotel where I was just
hoping to dive into the washroom. But man proposes and God disposes, my
room was not immediately available and I was made to wait for the
housekeepers to clean up the place. No one could have suspected the fire
that was burning under that seemingly flamboyant dress. But I survived.
Finally my room was ready and it was a case of escape to victory. I
scampered into the long-awaited comfort provided by the room at last and
embraced it with gratitude.
Soon it was time to go to the Nanet
Suites' venue of a seminar on Social Media & 21st Century
Journalism. Again traffic had built up because of the Friday Jumat in
Abuja where Muslim faithful were rushing to keep appointment with
almighty Allah. You must know when to drive and move around this city or
face huge disappointments. This was Lesson 102 for me. Here, you must
create your own method to madness. That is the rule of the game.
On
the road, I saw the convoy of a three-star General speeding to
God-knows-where. The protection squad of the big man was from Military
Intelligence and their camouflage and movement would have been described
by Derek Walcott as "fearful original sinuosities". They were awesome
in all ramifications. Some of them cuddled their fiery guns like babies.
Others dressed like the Japanese Ninja. They wore hoods that left only
the eyes open. These masquerades were truly fearsome ready to hack down
foolish intruders. For a moment, I thought I had mistakenly teleported
my being to Iraq or some other country where bedlam reigns as a result
of the ravages of war, for want of better description. This was
certainly not the same Abuja I left two years ago. It had become
depressingly but familiarly worse and decadent, like all things that our
leaders manage to infest and pollute. I had become a stranger in a
strange place. Some pestilence has obviously ravaged this land of
merciless people.
My depression was further compounded on
returning to the hotel and reading how the great country of Saudi Arabia
has finally decided to challenge the effrontery of Dubai in the Middle
East by erecting the new world's tallest building in Jeddah. By the time
it is ready, it would have pushed Dubai's Burj Khalifa to a pitiable
second place. The builders of The Shard Skyscraper of London, according
to a Reuters' report on Yahoo news, have been appointed Project Managers
for a beautiful sum of $1.2billion (about N192billion). The Kingdom
Tower Skyscraper is expected to stand at over one kilometre tall in the
skyline of Jeddah.
Saudi Arabia is generally on a spending spree
to improve infrastructure as well as meet its housing commitments. Now
wait for this, the skyscraper will take just five years to accomplish
complete with boutique hotel, luxury condominiums and serviced
apartments. I was left with no choice than to wonder where our own
leaders descended from that they can’t have such tall ambitions.
Why
have they limited us to commissioning boreholes and building monuments
to madness? How can we think of rehabilitating Abuja prostitutes with
billions of Naira when we can use the same money to tackle the root
causes? How can a new Abuja Gate become our priority when our children
are crying for mercy and compassion? What about the laughable edifice
that we now learn is meant to be the pied-à-terre of visiting African
First Ladies long after our indefatigable First Lady, Dame Patience
Jonathan, has gone into glorious oblivion?
We build our
skyscrapers in the tummies of some politicians and their acolytes. We
have not been able to construct a stretch of road between Lagos and
Benin City in the last 14 years. We have failed to fully rehabilitate
the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway within the same period. I doubt if any road
in Nigeria can ever pass a rigorous test against international
standards. We keep spending billions on our airports with no substantial
results. What we wasted on fuel subsidy alone last year would have
built six tallest buildings or more in the most famous capitals of the
world. But we chose to fritter ours away.
My submission is that we
can do better. And it won’t take much to achieve. Our leaders at the
very top only need to make up their minds if they are in power to
improve the fortunes of their people or to scavenge and embark on
outrageous self aggrandisement at the expense of those luckless citizens
of this great country called Nigeria. Our leaders must choose between
creating sustainable, worthwhile structures that will lead to the
greater emancipation of our people rather than embarking on white
elephant projects which eventually become our albatross. Ultimately our
leaders have to decide whether they want Nigeria to grow or whether they
simply want to wreck it like many others before them. That decision is
very crucial to the citizenry no matter how difficult it may seem for
our present crop of titular leaders.
Their choice is the thin line
between success and failure of the Nigerian nation. It is essentially
more acute now we are supposedly preparing for the celebration of an
imaginary centenary!
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