Nigeria, a citadel of impregnable and unimaginable absurdities

By Chiddy Ozumba

Nigerians might go down as the dumbest people that have ever walked the face of this planet earth. Yesterday, someone narrated to me how they had spent six hours traveling from Lagos to Asaba , but then spent five hours just crossing the Niger bridge. A journey of five minutes tops. I asked him why ? He said that it was bcos of the month . I said December? The guy said yes of course.


 He went on to say that every December, there was always huge traffic due to people returning for Christmas and these days pretty much everyone going to the north uses that bridge bcos of kidnapping in Edo state.

As fate would have it, a friend called from Lagos telling me that he was traveling overnight to the east so as to avoid the slow go at Niger bridge . He claimed that those who left yesterday morning didn't cross the bridge till midnight.

 I said ok. He claimed that they would sleep in Ore or Benin briefly and then pass during the early hours , say by 5 am.

So at 4.30am I called him, and luckily he was very close about to pass the bridge . He claimed that there was bad traffic already, up to a mile before the bridge.

I was like this early . I said to him, just document what the traffic looked like , until you have safely crossed the bridge . He did that and then sent me the video.

Folks it is not the amount of vehicles passing through this bridge that is the problem, rather it is the lack of governance in Nigeria today.

In the video , there was a check point by agberos half a mile before the bridge, there was another check point by the police after that ,and then there was road safety checkpoint after that.

That's three check points before the bridge . As you step on the bridge, 200 feet from there, there is a sedan type broken down vehicle on the opposing side of traffic, cutting it down to one lane , another 200 feet , there is a huge trailer that broke down blocking those entering Onitsha, once again cutting the lane down to one lane.

Then lastly on the bridge , there is a bigger trailer that's also broken down on this same bridge . The two trailers are being worked on right there on the bridge by mechanics using cellphone lights. Their parts are all over the place.

 The sedan looks abandoned, as there was no human close to it. As that wasn't enough, once you clear the bridge , there is a police checkpoint point right there on the spot, blocking everything and exthorting. Right after that is customs checkpoint and of course federal road safety.

When Buhari was in power as military head of state, Sonny Okosun Ozzidi sang a song saying
" which way Nigeria ".

Buhari has been back and he didn't miss a bit , and that song is more appropriate now.