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Ironically, the nation’s inland waterway authority has an office in Lokoja, while it has not a single boat for public transportation. This is a city from which the water channel goes all the way from Lokoja to Onitsha and would have been a tourist and commercial success if our leaders were creative from the word go.
A tragedy just happened in Lokoja. Again. This is not the first time and we pray (and hope) that it will be the last. But the truth is that if we do not start making a deafening noise from this very moment, another tragedy may follow. It was a raging fire, sudden and deadly. Who knows, tomorrow’s calamity may be the mother of all terrors.
It happened last Monday night. The report said no fewer than three persons were burnt beyond recognition when a fully loaded petrol tanker burst into flames after a brake failure in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital. The exact location, according to an eyewitness account, was opposite the Living Faith Church, Felele, along the ever-busy Lagos-Lokoja-Abuja express road.
The tanker, said to be fully loaded with diesel, was descending the sloppy section of the road when it experienced brake failure that resulted in the truck ramming into another truck, a Dyna pick-up van. The Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Stephen Dawulung, told newsmen on Tuesday in Lokoja that three persons were burnt to death while two other victims were rescued with burns and taken to the Federal Medical Centre in Lokoja for medical attention and the corpses deposited at the mortuary.
He then warned drivers of articulated vehicles, especially those carrying flammable substances to always be cautious and drive within the regulated speed limit and also maintain all vehicle safety protocols like the use of safety valves to present spillages of content in the event of a crash.
If one removed the names and the numbers in the above narration, the story could be copied and pasted for other similar tanker fire incidents on the same road. This is because it has become a string of disasters. Less than two weeks ago, it was in Ganaja, another linear settlement on the other flank of the town, on the Abuja-Lokoja-Enugu express road. Thankfully, the report said several shops and houses were razed but no life was lost.
But, sadly, this cannot be said of the one that happened last year or the year before it. All on that unfortunate “field of death,” Felele. The one of 2020 was quite traumatic. About 30 persons, including school children, lost their lives. Among the casualties were five students of the Kogi State Polytechnic, which is a tertiary institution located along the Felele road.
Indeed, this article is inspired by the fact that another tertiary institution just opened for business along Felele. The new jewel is the permanent campus of the Federal University Lokoja, which hitherto had operated fairly obscurely, ensconced in the Adankolo area of the Confluence City. Certainly, it is the tenacious pursuit of excellence and intellectual expansion, which drove the university administrators into developing a permanent geographical niche for the upwardly mobile school. But, alas, their dream never factored in the crawling trail of burning tankers, perennially falling off their tracks.
To paint a more vivid picture, this writer recalls that just before the ongoing Academic Staff Union of Universities strike commenced, students of the Federal University Lokoja had taken to the streets to protest what they described as “repeated mysterious deaths” of their fellow students as they resumed academic activities at the new Felele campus. They said two of such incidents drove them to protest. One died in an accident while riding on a commercial bike to school along Felele road. The other mysteriously died in his room. The traumatised students were worried and wanted explanations. Little did they know that burning tankers posed a clearer and more present danger.
For, if they knew, maybe they would have been more constructive in their protest demands. They would have not only demanded answers from their lecturers and school administrators alone but from the entire government. They would have demanded that the federal and state governments redesigned the town’s traffic infrastructure or totally overhaul the entire Lokoja transportation system. The raucous motor movements are not student-friendly, at all. Meanwhile, it is germane to mention that the FUL school authorities had since responded to their students’ dilemma by introducing an inter-campus shuttle between Adankolo and Felele.
Yet, because of the kind of the superstitious society we find ourselves in, one cannot but imagine how some FUL students would likely be thanking God for the ASUU strike because if they were in session, who knows whether one of them would be among the victims of the recent tanker fire.
To me, the failure of the Federal Government to reinvent Lokoja is a pointer to the paucity of innovative spirit that pervades our polity. Worse still, the serial failure of successive administrations of Kogi State in creating a tourist hub, out of this centrally located national monument, is an indictment of their taunted dynamic governance, even up till this moment that a relatively young and vibrant man is at the helms. Truth be told, the so-called Confluence City is nothing near the picture of a real city. It is just a moderate administrative town, basking in its rusty roofs of colonial grandeur that it has not been able to resurrect except in books and journals.
But now we have a real issue on our hands. The repeated burning petroleum tankers along the linear town must wake up all of us. There are a number of strategies we could deploy to ensure that the sad news never visits the nation again. The first is to create a new bypass for tanker drivers and heavy-duty vehicles. It is not enough to be marshalling out marching orders to drivers. They are humans and their vehicles are just machines. They are fallible. The wear and tear on the roads of Nigeria brought about due to disrepair is enough to wreck even a brand new truck, talk less of the “London-used” brands that most of the fuel and commodities hauliers are pushing.
That too should be a reminder of how we have used our own hands to kill our own country. If we had a functional rail system that converges in Lokoja, the central station for the whole nation, would we be worried about trucks falling off the tar? It is because of the lack of other alternatives that the roads are clogged with heavy-duty vehicles, all day every day. Similarly, one could also think of what an intercity river transportation, centred in Lokoja, would do for our nation.
Ironically, the nation’s inland waterway authority has an office in Lokoja, while it has not a single boat for public transportation. This is a city from which the water channel goes all the way from Lokoja to Onitsha and would have been a tourist and commercial success if our leaders were creative from the word go.
Secondly, there should be a robust linear fire service on Lokoja roads, the same way we have road safety officers, police officers, army officers and vehicle inspection officers, along the roads. The fire department officers should be mounted on every one kilometre, with enough rapid response equipment for an express road, especially during evening and morning time, when the tankers deem the road open season for their speeding binge.
Thirdly, a new management mechanism must be designed for Lokoja, which must be researched based and intervention-structured. The town is not an ordinary location like any other Nigerian town. It is the centre of Nigeria. If Nigeria is a human being, it is the major blood vessel ferrying blood across the extremities: From the heart to the brain, from the brain to the torso, arms and legs. As a matter of fact, it deserves special status, just as Lagos is seeking such as the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria. The Confluence City should become a Nigerian project.
