They are young, fast and furious and alarmingly daring on the roads. They drive Toyota Hiace 18-seater buses commonly referred to as hummer buses from the Northern part of Nigeria to Lagos. They are neither deterred by night nor day, all they want is to make two trips from their destination to Lagos in one week and make N250,000 weekly.
Behind this dare-devil approach to driving is the regular injection of psychotropic drugs, particularly ampitamense, that ensure they remain awake throughout the week to enable them complete their two trips to Lagos and back. These injections are administered to them right inside the parks by quacks that are oblivious of the danger posed to millions of the travelling public.
To begin with, these 18-seater buses are not meant for long inter–city travels. They are meant for intra-city travels, and because Nigeria, being what it is, (unregulated) anything goes.
Most of the buses are owned by state owned transport companies, and even private individuals can register with the state owned firms for a fee, and there appears to be little supervision as to conduct and sanction of drivers for infractions.
Ordinarily, all drivers are expected to undergo mental and physical fitness tests, including eye tests, from time to time, but there is no evidence that such checks are being conducted, thus giving room for unsuitable persons being allowed to ferry passengers, consequently ending up risking passengers’ safety and well-being.
Statistics from the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, show that, hardly a week passes without these kind of buses being involved in one accident or the other, not because of mechanical failures but because of the irrational ways the drivers conduct themselves on the highways.
According to FRSC records, 426 people are killed every month from road accidents. In other words, 15 persons everyday are killed on our highways.
Even though other reasons are responsible for the frequent accidents on our highways, such as poor condition of the roads themselves, improper markings of the highways, poor lighting of vehicles in the night and the unnecessary mounting of roadblocks on the highways by security forces and state tax collectors, it is clear that the biggest culprits in causing the accidents are the drivers themselves.
It is also known that many of the drivers have no understanding of road signs, nor are they properly schooled to drive. It is common knowledge that many commercial vehicle drivers simply graduate from driving okada motorcycles to driving commercial vehicles, thereby bringing along many “baggage” of chaotic behaviour and lack of patience and understanding of what long distance driving entails.
Medical doctors are emphatic that continuous consumption of these psychotropic drugs lead to madness and sudden heart failures among others, which also contributes to the recklessness and deaths we see on our highways.
The audacity of quacks in openly selling these drugs, in the various motor parks across the country, calls for concerted effort by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, and other organs of government at the state and local governments levels, to make concerted efforts to monitor, halt and apprehend all those involved is the sale, consumption and the indiscriminate proliferation of these substances.
Until about 1990, the procurement of all psychotropic drugs was exclusively vested with the federal government where it alone imports and distributes these drugs, but with the deregulation of the economy all manner of people are importing dangerous substances legally and illegally without trace.
Time has come to persuade the various state governments-owned transport companies to sign an undertaking with the security agencies, including the NDLEA, that under no circumstance should drugs and other intoxicants be allowed to be sold in or around motor parks.
The federal government must also make it mandatory that all victims of accidents are fully compensated by transport companies or by insurance entities, as part of a deliberate policy to sanitise the public transport systems and to bring succor to victims of accidents.
It is clear that the fight against drug trafficking must be everybody’s business, as it is partly responsible in the increase of violent crimes, such as insurgency, banditry, cattle rustling and robberies in addition to the unnecessary loss of lives we are witnessing on our motorways.
The National Assembly, which has an oversight function of government institutions, must ensure that new laws come into being, which ensure the protection of the lives and properties of travelers on our highways, not only safe but also comfortable, like it should be in every society. All our highways must have lay-bys with all facilities that will ensure that drivers can branch, to rest, sleep, eat, take showers, etc. Nigerian roads should not just be designed like racing tracks without provision for conveniences for both drivers and passengers.
Already, as a society we are having our hands full with myriad of problems from poor quality education, lack of gainful employment, extreme poverty and climate change that is making some of our habitats inhabitable.
We must fight this drug scourge religiously before it destroys all of us. We must respect human life as ordained in all religions.
It is time we all rose up and say no to the increasing carnage on our roads. Every traveler ought to imbibe the spirit of “the money we pay na for safe journey wo”..!
Toro writes from Abuja
