I was 35 years old when I first flew to Paris. If memory serves me right, it was an unimpressionable intercontinental flight to the so-called City of Romance. Even from the shabby Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, the Charles de Gaulle International Airport was non-impressive. Paris prides itself on its gothic infrastructure instead of aping the Burj Khalifa or New York’s concrete jungle. I felt embarrassed for Monsieur Jacques Chirac and could have told him so except that he preferred to hide in his posh Elysee Palace.
My encounter with the skyscrapers at La Defense redeemed the Parisien image until I became a guest of my then pastor on the 22nd floor of one of the buildings. My acrophobia increased when, sitting down for a sumptuous meal, I heard the rattle of plates as the building gently swayed like a fibrous-rooted tree in the afternoon Parisien wind. Sensing my discomfort, my hosts explained to me that the buildings were designed to sway as a defence mechanism against a possible earthquake. When lunch was over and I was invited for a walk in the woods, you could race in my stomach without galloping.
One thing did arouse my curiosity somehow; my first contact with the Paris Metro. Commissioned in 1900, this complex web of surface and underground metro network covers 226.9 kilometres of tracks and services 308 stations connecting 64 lines. I felt shortchanged that none of my past leaders that passed through the city, using this wonder felt compelled to replicate it in Nigeria. I became even angrier that at the time, the Nigerian rail line had not extended beyond where it was in 1960 and that when a plan was made to bring in a metro line for the over-congested city of Lagos, General Muhammadu Buhari myopically cancelled the project.
This is why one could sympathise with conspiracy-theorists that said Buhari did that out of spite for the south especially as he eventually signed on the extension of a modern rail gauge to serve his home state, Katsina and Niger Republic, the home of his cousins. This garland of nepotism was hung on Buhari’s neck by Rotimi Amaechi who, in return got the meaningless title of Dan Amanan Daura.
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A functional rail system could have advanced the Nigerian trade, economy understanding than any other project. But Nigerian leaders were prodigal enough to squander the nation’s wealth on Udoji award and Festac when its infrastructure needed a boost.
Well, yesterday was a watershed moment in the history of Lagos State as Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu witnessed the take-off of the multi-billion dollar Lagos Blue Rail Project initiated by Babatunde Raji Fashola. Available literature says the line stops in five stations –Marina, the National Theatre, Orile-Iganmu, Surulere and Mile 2. When extended, it is expected to link Okokomaiko. This is a huge milestone even if it comes 60 years later than expected.
It places Lagos in the same pedestal as the Paris Metro, the London Tube, the New York Rail (with its rats) and other nations. Huge congratulations to Lagosians and Nigerians for finally signing-in to rail development. It is my hope that this project is sustained and properly run in a manner that makes us all proud.
Requiem for a patriot
It is not often that a meteor drops from the star-studded firmament of the Nigerian military without flags flying at half-mast. It was the case when September last year Major General Abdullahi Iyanda Muraina passed intestate at a Dubai hospital. Until his retirement and subsequent demise, the highly decorated General served at the Army Pay Records. He was at different times the chief of accounts and budget at the army headquarters, a position that must have sharpened his business sense. His enemies tried unsuccessfully to soil his records with the 2016 arms procurement contract investigation, but he swam ashore into a peaceful retirement without as much as a day with interrogators of the dreaded EFCC.
Among the chattels credited to him were eight (8) posh houses in Abuja’s elite districts conservatively valued at N1 billion each. He had homes in Ibadan, his home town; farmlands and at least one fuel station on the busy Abuja-Keffi highway. Among the six vehicles he left behind, two were bulletproof vans to be shared among his two wives.
For an accountant far removed from the battlefront, these were modest investments that guarantees a retirement from poverty. Unfortunately, death snatched him before he could enjoy his blessings. Last week, solicitors to his two wives placed a full-page advert in the media asking judges who were not privy to how the wealth were amassed to decide how it should be shared. What a great loss to the nation, prudence in the military and a potential circus for his enemies as they watch how the courts share the hard-earned wealth of a prudent and patriotic officer/accountant!