While Lagosians are recovering from the madness caused by the fuel scarcity this past week, they were hardly prepared for the spectacle that befell them early Monday morning. At least, I was not. There was immense traffic, but it wasn’t caused by motor vehicles on major roads and express ways, instead it was a human gridlock as hundreds of people tried to cross a pedestrian bridge. There was a stagnant and restless congestion of people atop the Ojota pedestrian bridge. The same situation was mirrored beneath the bridge with a long queue of people waiting, pushing and struggling to get on and off the bridge.

Soon, a throng of people charged across the road to the other side, disregarding the pedestrian bridge and the stipulated law against crossing the road. Clearly they had enough. It is the beginning of the week and people were running late for work. As I joined the group of people crossing the road, I could hear several cursing, murmuring and grumbling. A man in front of me said, “Change? We don’t want this [kind of] change. A lady beside me lamented, “I’ve been standing there [referring to the queue at the bottom of the bridge] for good 15 minutes…” Others out rightly hurled insults at the Lagos State governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode and his administration.

In a bid avoid to accidents and create some form of sanity on the Ikorodu- Ojota road, the Lagos state government erected a long stretch of wired fences along the middle curb. This was done with good intentions but it really did not seem like it this morning judging by the stampede on and around the pedestrian bridge. By now, I am certain the Lagos state government knows that the fencing project is a failure as they have only succeeded in achieving the exact issues they were initially trying to avoid – accidents and chaos. “I would have been stepped on. People were angry, and impatient,” a source told Ventures Africa. The young lady was almost trampled upon in the stampede this morning. Her shoes had been ripped from her legs due to all the pushing and any attempt made to recover it would have been dangerous,

“Would it have been better for people to keep crossing the road instead of using the bridge,” a Nigerian asked on twitter. The answer is no. But neither is the governments decision to erect a fence without proper thought and consideration. Given the population of the state, it should have been easy to envisage possible outcomes of completely blocking off the curb, but judging from the events of this morning, the Lagos state government clearly did not think that leaving only a bridge in a central area like Ojota to serve the multitude of people heading out, daily, would result in a human gridlock. If they had, they would have either thought to construct another pedestrian bridge like Abidion Arogunmaya suggested on twitter, or a simple Zebra crossing controlled by traffic signals. When will the government stop using  the ‘trial by error’ approach to tackle pressing matters?

Elsewhere on Ventures

Triangle arrow