Sir: One of the most glaring evidence of insensitivity on the part of Nigerian government is failure to address the menace of tanker explosion and falling trailers on Nigerian roads thereby supervising a constant recurrence of wanton waste of innocent lives and throwing of families into irreparable agonies.

Where government is alive to its responsibilities, a single fatal accident leading to a single loss of lives is never allowed to repeat itself as all necessary machineries and measures meant to prevent a recurrence would be activated instantly. But the forces ruling Nigeria are never known to live within the country in the true sense of the word and so are always oblivious of all the raging catastrophes and tragedies encountered by the citizens on a daily basis.

Tanker explosions and cases of falling trailers occur almost every week at different parts of the country leaving behind so many unfortunate casualties. Each time any tanker falls and its products spill on the road, people are hurriedly drawn to the scene in their ignorant thoughts of trying to make money.

All their thoughts will always be to hurry to scoop as much fuel as they can totally forgetting what usually happened to those who took the same risk at different times in the past. And then within the next few minutes, they too are engulfed by wild fire leaving no escape.

This has been the recurring decimal in Nigeria and no government has made any effort to put a permanent stop to it. The poor masses never learn anything about the dangers inherent in trying to scoop fuel from scenes of tanker accidents either.

In times past, fuel was not carried on the roads but through the rails and the danger or fear of explosion was almost non-existent. That was when the rail system was still in good shape and helped in no small measure to prevent so many horrors connected with the transportation of fuel. But as soon as the same people who killed the rail system realised that a gap had been created and an opportunity had opened for them to make millions of money through road transportation of fuel, large funds were invested in purchase of tankers and the lifting of fuel through the roads.

Since then, so many lives have been and are still being lost and all successive governments could do is always to fold their hands as if the problem is insurmountable. No matter whatever the number of people that are wasted after each tanker explosion, all the government does each time is to send condolence messages to the families of the victims while the following day, business returns and the tankers are back on the roads again in their thousands while the nation awaits the next tragedy with bated breath.

Apart from the dangers of tankers explosion, another pointer to government’s intransigence is the poor state of Nigeria’s roads. It is so unfortunate that in spite of the fact gruesome road accidents continue to claim so many lives due to the poor state of the roads, not much is being done to improve the state of most of them.

Apart from few newly-constructed roads scattered all over the country, most of the link roads are still in very poor state and constitute major headache to most motorists. It is difficult to understand why in spite of the billions of dollars which continue to go into private pockets in the name of embezzlement, Nigeria’s leaders find it extremely difficult to deliver good roads that would assist in reducing the rate of accidents in the country.

It is unfortunate that many Nigerians continue to lose their lives on the roads, yet, most of the promises of road repairs by the government are usually only on paper. Kudos must, however, be given to the immediate past administration for seeing to the completion of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway as well as fixing the second Niger bridge. Nigerians look forward to whatever the incumbent government will also do to write its name in gold as far as the state of Nigerian roads is concerned.

•Oyewusi is the coordinator of Ethics Watch International Nigeria.