The Concourse
– By Soney Antai
The enemy is within
Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it – James 4:1 (The Message Bible).
Walt Kelly it was, who made his comic, Polo, utter the words, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Perhaps Kelly, who ran his cartoons in American newspapers between 1948 and 1973, drew inspiration from Oliver Hazard Perry (August 23, 1785 – August 23, 1819), his American naval commodore compatriot, who wrote to General William Henry Harrison, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours….”
Perry’s line, written during the War of 1812 between the United States Navy and the British Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie, and the one by Kelly much later in time, have been referenced by many over time. The British lost that war, and reporting on it, Oliver Perry wrote those words to Major General William Henry Harrison to announce the American victory over Britain. The rest, as you must have heard it said, is now history.
It is a fact of life that oftentimes we create or enable our own problems. Sadly, when their negative comeuppance comes, we blame everyone else except ourselves. It’s always the other person’s fault, hardly ours. When we don’t blame others, we make excuses to assuage our compunction and mitigate our culpability; yet the enemy is us. And so, as long as we are at home with this mindset, so long would our problems endure, because we wouldn’t have the mindsight we need to deal with the challenges.
Ever since PBT’s renewed hope agenda became a crippling receding hope for ordinary Nigerians, it has become difficult for most of us to, among others, travel at will. With petrol selling at more than ₦2200 per litre in Akwa Ibom State in the last few days of last month, fares went up forcing many to slog, stay home or use the few and expensive means of public transport available. Yours sincerely, being part of the oppressed throng, hasn’t been travelling of late. Even commuting within town has become herculean. That was the case even before the late September hoopla. It only got worse after that.
As expected, when petrol price(s) shot up in dimension unthinkable and direction unimaginable, fares hit the roof, burst it and headed towards the heavens. The problem (at least what most of us were told) arose from a face off between the Joint Task Force (JTF) and Petrol Tankers Association of Nigeria (PTAN) (See The Concourse of last week for details).
By the beginning of this month, the cost of petrol had gone down, though still shamefully high for a leading petroleum producing country with four dysfunctional refineries, and too distressing for a country whose presidents have doubled as Ministers of Petroleum for at least more than nine years and counting, to ₦1300 or less.
This development raised hopes that we would see petrol transport fares revert to the situation before. But what have seen? Fares are still where they had risen to. For instance, the fare on Uyo/Oron Road that rose to ₦3000 remained that way even after the drop in petrol price. Uyo/Abak Road fare remained at ₦800 that it shot up to. The same thing was true of Abak/Ikot Akpaden; Uyo/Ikot Akpaden, where the fare remained at ₦3000. Worse still, the fare on Uyo/Umuahia route by AKTC buses rose to ₦6000 as at 3rd October, yet a fortnight before it was ₦4000!
What do all these point to? Symptoms of our collective corruptive proclivity, and indicative of the irredeemability of our collective corrosive corruptibility. Visit any office and seek some assistance and you will notice that most junior civil servants demand bribes before they render service for which they are getting salaries. Road Safety officials are rivalling their police counterparts in distorting money from drivers and Kẹkẹ drivers. And quite distressingly, soldiers on the roads have joined them.
On my way to Abia State last week Thursday, I was unimpressed by the high number of road blocks on the Ikot Ekpene-Umuahia Road. There was even one made into a paling with rollers, in Nto Ndang. The structure is so crude and archival that one wonders how the police imagined and constructed it. Somewhere in Uruk Usọ, Obot Akara LGA, a young soldier flagged down our bus. The driver stopped and walked across to meet him. Minutes thereafter the driver returned to the bus, pulled open the bus’ doors, saying that the soldier said he wanted to search the vehicle.
To our amazement, angst and anger, the soldier merely shuffled down towards the bus. Just then, a car pulled up at the check point and he stopped and turned and met the car driver. With his gun hung across his back, this Big Boy Soldier (BBS) struck up a conversation with the car occupant ignoring us altogether.
For about five minutes, he was there very relaxed in his yackety-yak, while we sat there inside the bus like hostages, waiting. It was only when he overheard our protests that our BBS waved us on with the back of his hand while he kept his head stuck in the car window and continuing with his conversation. But why did he do that? Apparently the driver refused to play ball. And you tell me ours is a problem that will go away soon? Was this a politician in action? No, it is the enemy we have been looking for elsewhere while he lurks within us.
I My experience on the Ikot Ekpene-Obot Akara-Umuahia Road got me the more convinced that the federal government should scrap the Ministry of Works and set up a Directorate of Works (DOW) which would manage road infrastructure in Abuja and set standards for the construction of interstate roads. In other words, states should construct roads up to their boundaries with neighbouring states, while the DOW sets rules and regulations for what the states do, to maintain common standards.
There is little doubt that the federal government has failed to maintain interstate roads on their watch. For instance, the Umuahia/Ikot Ekpene Road is a horrible sight for the most sides. It has collapsed. Around Ikwuano LGA, the basin and potholes are such that I kept wondering if some of them were not large, if not deep, enough to host baby blue whales! The few and far between vehicles on that road had a hellish time zig-zagging from one side of the road to the other in search of solid and swallow spots to place their tyres.
As we dragged along I couldn’t help but wonder where our billions go in the name of road construction of federal roads. It reminded me of a similar unsavoury experience on Ikot Akpaden-Ikot Abasi Road that I passed through the day before. There, whoever is supposed to construct the road simply destroys it, sets up unimpressive drains, and goes to sleep.
The whole shebang here is that we shouldn’t be like John Stockwell with his book, In Search of Enemies. Reason? Our enemy has been found; it is us. Since it appears that more folks don’t have respect for dignity and integrity, it will take the remaining remnants slogging their guts out to turn things around; but are they ready?
