'Of all of my memories of ... Nigeria the most lasting is that of the endless roads' (Robert Collis 1970)



I stumbled across this book with a wonderful chapter on roads and driving in Nigeria, Robert Collis' (1970) Nigeria in Conflict.[1] Collis worked as Head of the Paediatric Department at the Medical School in Ibadan and Professor of Paediatrics in Lagos. In many ways it is just another account of Nigeria by an expatriate working there in the late 1950s. However, it is well written. – There is for example a rather incriminating account of a conversation he had with an English businessman operating in Nigeria in the chapter on corruption:

'One simply can't get anywhere … without bribing one's way right down the line. These Nigerians are sharks!'

'Isn't it worse for you who imagine yourself a Christian gentleman … to be giving bribes than it is for these dishonest chaps to accept them?' I asked.

'Look,' he said angrily, ' if I didn't the Americans would.'

(Collis 1970: 184)

But given my current interests, it was the chapter of roads and driving that interested me the most. Let me give you a taste.

Of all of my memories of my surveys in Nigeria the most lasting is that of the endless roads and the heat of the cruel sun. …. These roads must be the most dangerous in the world. I cannot say that the drivers of any one tribe are the worst offenders for in every part of the country one continually sees wrecks piled up on and off the roads and the injured lying about. Every driver always finds the offending driver a member of 'the other' tribe!

Drivers in Nigeria, and this applies also to expatriates, seem to become maddened by the long distances and the general difficulties, so that they continually break the rules. … The drivers more than those anywhere else seem to carry an inborn certainty that 'it can't happen to me' or a blind recklessness. So you must always expect the worst. At any corner you may be faced with a group of cars coming in the opposite direction, all trying to pass each other on the corner and blocking the entire road ahead. or on coming to a rise a car may come hurtling over the top on the wrong side. Your only hope of survival on these occasions is to drive off the road into the bush and hope for luck.

(Collis 1970: 78-79)

Collis worked as medical doctor and therefore probably noticed accidents and the injured and dead that they produced more than somebody else may have. In his short chapter on the roads in Nigeria he describes several occasions on which his professional consciousness required him to stop, take control of the scene of the accident and organise the transport of the injured to the next hospital

Anyway, this is his assessment of lorry drivers – the bit that I'll probably at some point include in my writing.

Among the Nigerian population one comes to recognise some particularly dangerous driving types. First there are the taximen. … They are responsible for a lot of accident but at least most of them are good drivers in control of their cars. This cannot be said of most of the lorry-drivers from those of the single truck to those who drive immense Mercedes lorries with trailers.

These often come from long distances loaded up with merchandise and all sorts of official and unofficial passengers. Their drivers become so tired after driving all day that they tend to fall asleep at the wheel, or to take to drugs. On one occasion one of them pushed into the back of my stationary car. When I got out I found the driver was hardly able to stand. He had been driving for ten hours. He said he had three hours more before he reached his destination. His employer was the Minister of Transport.

Perhaps the worst of the lot are the mammy-wagon drivers. … They kill and maim more people than anybody else. 

(Collis 1970: 79-80)

Robert Collis (1970): Nigeria in Conflict. London: Secker & Warburg. [SBN 436 10560 8, Snippet View available at Google Books, Goodreads Review to be found here]


[1] The conflict in question is the Nigerian civil war/Biafra war to which the author dedicates three chapters, on its outbreak, Gowon and Ojukwu, and propaganda respectively.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Signature Gallery, Abuja

On my way back from Lagos to Maidguri I had another stop-over in Abuja and I used the day there to meet up with Hussein Akar, the owner of Signature Gallery in Abuja. He wasn’t around when I first popped by on Thursday on the way from the airport to Ella’s place but I was able to make an appointment for the next day. I was a bit nervous about meeting him because, despite the recommendation to see him by his uncle at the Signature Gallery in Lagos and Nabil’s friends, I wasn’t really quite sure whether I had enough questions for him to justify disturbing him. However, it turned out to be a really useful and interesting discussion. In fact, he was kind enough to call one Zaria graduate during our conversation to pass on one of my questions and provided me with his number and that of somebody at the Society of Nigeria Artists before I left. At the same time, his emphasis on Zaria graduates, Lagos as an important place of residence for artists from different parts of the country and also t...
Keep reading

'Portraits' of Sheikh Usman dan Fodio

Image
When I flicked through the papers this morning – online, if you must know – I came across an article in the Daily Trust that extolls the virtues Usman dan Fodio and his generation of northern Nigerian political leaders. It sets them up as good examples of leadership and argues that current President of Nigeria Muhammad Buhari should take inspiration from them to solve the current crisis of leadership in his government. Now, I don't want to get into political arguments here. I only mention this article – here, in a space that I said I'd use to organise my thoughts for my art historical writing – because it was illustrated by a photograph of a smiling elderly man. The caption underneath the photograph identifies the man in the picture as 'Shaikh Usumanu Danfodio'. Now, the founder of the Sokoto caliphate may not have been the only Sheikh named Usman (or Osman or Usumanu) in the family. However, the article makes it pretty clear that it is him that the author ...
Read more

Popular Portraits of Sheikh Ahmad Tijani - Another Little (Procrastination) Gem

Image
Once again I have been procrastinating for few minutes to get over a temporary writing blog and what did I find? Look, the iconography of the Sheikh Ahmad Tijani poster I have collected in Kano has been more influential in West Africa than I originally would have thought. Granted, this is again an image from Senegal, a country with a strong tradition of Sufi Islam and adaptation of imported religious prints into new media, behind glass painting, followed by the subsequent extension of this artistic practice to include a variety of other religious and profane subject matter … anyway, its related to my research so I’m excited about it! So here you go, this is what I found: I guess, the choice of this image speaks of its ubiquity and iconic power in Senegal at least – iconic, here, in the sense of the image’s potential to symbolise not only the depicted person but also the ideas and philosophy associated with his name. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out when the boo...
Keep reading