IF an ambulance with a critically ill patient had been stuck in the holdup that ensued, it would not have mattered. A crucial task was ongoing; one of Lagos’ many roads was being repaired. And everything else must wait!

It was at Egbeda, last week Monday. A tractor-trailer carrying a heap of rocks and sand moved innocently along the road, like all other vehicles. Suddenly it stopped. Men of the Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC), in their yellow overalls, jumped down, zealously, picked their instruments, and while other road users waited, tyres glued to the spot, they began the patching up of a pothole.

Any government that conceives the idea of mending bad roads deserves applause. Equipping a team with a functioning truck and motivating them to work under a hot sun is also praiseworthy. If anything, it shows that at least some portion of precious state resources manage to miss the lining of unscrupulous pockets, and that leadership, though sleepy, may not have begun to snore.

But should road users have to endure the trauma of halting or snail pacing for valuable minutes or even hours in traffic, while government agencies carry out rehabilitations? This is the unfortunate scenario; and residents, unwillingly, may have come to accept it as yet another of those things that make Lagos actually Lagos.

In ridiculous instances, road maintenance has cut the semblance of a government desperate to assure the citizenry that it is working. Else, how might observers explain stopping traffic for rehabilitation during the city’s peak periods, Christmas or New Year holidays? It would seem the authorities, cornering thousands of passing eyes to advantage, want to hear: “Praise God! They are fixing the road at last! This government is indeed working!”

LSPWC Public Relations Officer, Mr. Samuel Ayetutu, pleads with residents to “tolerate us”, saying that while the agency often engages in night operations to ease the sufferings of road users, “sometimes, we are not able to wait (till nightfall) in certain locations.” He explained that while one road user might complain over hardship encountered in the course of repairs, another who passes through the same area, moments afterwards, applauds the agency.

But that does not excuse the insensitivity of the Nigerian authorities in most matters. While momentary pains might not be unconnected with a government’s need to deliver dividends, halting traffic at midday in the name of ‘government in action’, can hardly be justified.

“To recount late Afrobeat maestro, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Lagosians and perhaps a lot more Nigerians are simply suffering and smiling. The business of government is the people, and so people must not die because a government wants to be seen as working,” says a motorist who was locked in the Egbeda traffic.

A government is as powerful as it is able to deploy all resources to making life most tolerable for its people. And that includes ensuring that traffic flows unhindered in Egbeda and all of Lagos State, whether roads are being repaired or not.

A geologist at the University of Lagos and winner of the 2008 edition of the NLNG (Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas) Prize for Science, Dr. Ebenezer Ajibola Meshida, says: “What we now have is like a total breakdown of normalcy. In the past, we didn’t have such attitude. It is very disturbing. I knew all that happened when the British were here, and after they had left. This is a sign that government agencies are not really concerned with the comfort of the people.

The 72-year-old don stressed: “It is highly unprofessional. In the developed world, repairs are not done during peak hours; they are done during the night. And there is enough security, enough lighting and seriousness to finish jobs within shortest possible time and with very high standard.

“During festive periods people come out and say they want to carry out repairs. They put up signboards that say: “Tax Payers Money At Work!’ This is funny and very undesirable. Taxpayers’ money should work on roads unnoticed, so that we simply see the final result and wonder when the work was done. Not disturbing us. I think the nearest word to describing this is hypocrisy.”

Meshida, however, agreed that things are moving up in Lagos, compared to other states of the federation. “I will mention Lagos without mentioning anybody’s name. I know what it was in Lagos and I know what it is now. I know when things broke down totally. And I know that things are getting much better,” he said.

That is optimistic. But there is no harm if ‘much better’ becomes ‘best’ and ‘best’ becomes the norm for government’s attitude towards the rehabilitation of roads.