By Inatimi Spiff
I was lucky that following a few years of unemployment after graduation and some gruelling years in low paying employment, my subsequent jobs with better endowed employers involved substantial travels within the country which I had always looked forward to.
How I miss those road trips across the country. Among the pleasures I had hoped to indulge in as a retiree were occasional road trips here and there to attend the wedding of a friend’s or relative’s child, or the funeral of their parent or spouse, or their own platinum anniversary.
Aren’t the highways plied daily by motorists, you would wonder. Indeed, they are. However, for about a decade now the widely reported agonising experiences of commuters on these highways have restrained me. Most notable are the dilapidated condition of most highways and the menace of kidnapping of travellers.
People are on these highways daily out of necessity. Since it is for recreation I want to be on the highway today, I hardly go on a road trip these days because of the risks. Still, I am filled with nostalgia whenever I recall my previous road trips across the country.
I took a keen interest in Geography in secondary school and often gazed through the windows during road or train journeys, reflecting on the topography, flora and fauna of different parts of the beautiful country.
Up to 2010, the highways were in tolerable condition. Highway robberies were of serious concern, but kidnappings of travellers were rare. Travellers considered accidents as the biggest risk then, unlike now when the perception is that kidnappings on the highways constitute the biggest risk.
Looking back, even the monthly long distance bus trips by night between Onitsha and Kaduna in 1990 – when I was the Port Harcourt Correspondent of a Kaduna based weekly newspaper – was fun. I made these return trips by night for 5 consecutive months without anxiety.
Recalling these series of night trips between Onitsha and Kaduna, it goes blank soon after departure from the bus terminals because I would dose off until the bus makes a brief stop for refreshments at Akwanga. I am certain that fear of kidnappers will not let me dose off if I find myself in a night bus heading to or from Kaduna today.
Over time, my road travels became more fulfilling with company car and even further with company car and driver.
Leading a sales task force in Jos for a brewery, I also made many monthly trips from Jos to Kaduna and back in 1998 with company car this time for our monthly area sales meeting. On one of those trips heading to Kaduna, about ten minutes after driving past Saminaka, the almost new official car broke down by the lonely road.
I was putting on a tie and could speak no Hausa, so it was quite obvious I was not a denizen the immediate rustic environment. I opened the bonnet of the car and peered in bewilderment into it. Some moments later a local riding past on a bicycle stopped, introduced himself as the headmaster of a primary school, and offered to get me a mechanic. With his help I was once again on my way to Kaduna about thirty minutes later.
At the time there were virtually no mobile phones in Nigeria, but I did not panic while waiting for help alone by the highway as I watched a couple of herders shepherd their cattle through shrubs beside the road. How unnerving it would have been for me if this had happened within the past decade.
A few years before this incident, my good friend and colleague, Abdulkadir Sarki, offered to help me bring the company boarded car I bought to Lagos where I was from the brewery in Kaduna. On the day we were to head to Lagos, the car was returned to us late in the afternoon by the mechanic after it was serviced.
Mallam Sarki departed Kaduna with me in the car just before 6pm. After about 40 minutes it became really dark, but we had no thoughts of any danger of being kidnapped until we made a night stop in Minna and continued the journey early the next morning.
Road and train trips delight travellers with a variety of sights and sounds. Brief stops offer opportunities for acquiring produces and materials directly from the locals without the middleman.
Meanwhile, as I look forward to future road trips for recreation when our bad roads have been reasonably rehabilitated and terrorism on the highways drastically reduced, I would continue of romanticise my previous ones.
I was usually meditative driving alone to Lagos from Abuja and back for Easter and Christmas in 2001 and 2002 before my family re-joined me in Abuja, only stopping for refreshments in Benin City. It was so pleasant when I drove with my wife from Abuja to Port Harcourt for a wedding and back in 2006 despite of the many Police, FRSC and NDLEA check points we encountered variously at Ayimgba, 9th Mile, Okigwe Junction and so on.
There are quite a good number of invigorating memories of my various road trips across all the geo-political zones to keep the flame of embarking on another burning in me until I resume when the road infrastructure and security conditions in our dear country improve considerably.
The roads are the current arteries connecting different parts of the country. Nowadays, those with means and power just fly from city to city or, if they have to, travel by road with heavily armed convoys. This gravely limits direct contact with the rural folk.
How would the majority of our population who live in the rural areas possibly be taken into account by our leaders who fly over them or only approached them on the ground with armed guards?
Inatimi Spiff is a Communications Consultant