City Traffic News

The school of Lagos-watchers that keep an eye on the city’s traffic management chiefly out of a morbid fear of decline or of possible worst-case scenario has taken on new adherents of late. For signs are mounting that the stakeholders’response to the revolutionary measures taken by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode less than a week after his inauguration to tackle the Apapa gridlock has slowed – or even, some say, gone into reverse. Though the governor and his team have continued in a most civil manner to confront the menacing situation by experimenting on a range of time-honoured strategies including consultations with stakeholders and inspection tours to black spots, the chief worry is that the situation goes beyond what a state can handle. It is connected to fuel scarcity,which obviously reflects the failure of a nation to harness and effectively manage her natural resources. What started as crawling traffic in and out of the Tin-Can Island ports, the tank farms, the factories, a

Outside Ohaji/Egbema, his local constituency, Honourable Orie is anything but a household name. A graduate of University of Abuja and a new entrant in the Imo political arena, he commands no battalions and strikes few public poses. But if the obviously marginalized constituency finally breaks away from relegation and settles into socio-political revival with visible developmental indices in the next four years, it will be in no small measure thanks to him. As the House Member representing Ohaji/Egbema constituency in the Imo State House of Assembly, Hon. Orie has spent the last six months investigating into the slow pace of development in the constituency and has for the time being held culpable the moribund state of electric power supply that threw the constituency into darkness for the past five years. As House committee Chairman on Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Affairs, he is on a vantage position to supervise all projects of the commission in the stat

Four months ago, Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, unveiled a plan to introduce what he described as a world class traffic information and management system to drastically change the state of Lagos traffic. When it becomes operational soon as the Governor promised, the envisaged sustainable solution required for urgent decongestion of black spots such as Third Mainland Bridge, Lekki-Epe Expressway, Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, Abule-Egba and Dopemu would have been set in motion. Among other suppositions, this smart network of cameras, road sensors, and electronic displays designed to collect and deliver real time information to commuters and help to regulate traffic would be one of Ambode’s answers to his sworn critics including The Economist of London. Since assuming office at the end of May, the Governor has introduced a few populist gestures in contrast to some perceived high-handed traffic management policies of his predecessor, Babatunde Fashola. One of su

A little systemic imagination helps to convey the scale of neglect to roadworthiness in Nigeria’s trucking sector. If the 61,090 people who lost their lives in 14,087 road crashes nationwide between 2006 and 2014 lived in one community, its population would be similar to Lagos of 1872 when it became a British colony. Lagos itself which records annually the highest number of road crashes and fatalities is home to the largest fleet of articulated vehicles in Nigeria as it registers an average of 12,000 trucks every year. In 2011, the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) reported that Nigeria has an average of 5,000 tankers involved in wet cargo haulage, and 2,500 trailers in dry cargo plying Nigeria’s roads daily. FRSC records also revealed that between 2007 and June 2010, a total of 4,017 tanker/trailer crashes were recorded on Nigerian roads, with a yearly average of 1,148 crashes and a total of 4,076 persons killed in such crashes involving tankers and trailers.Evidently, the figure