I was having a convo with an older ‘sis’ of mine a few days ago…We were riding in the tube and it occurred to me that the London underground has existed for about 156 years.
Nigeria got amalgamated more than 50 years after and got our independence a 100 years later, yet we don’t have a rail system that we can truly call stamdard.
So, our railway in Nigeria was established by colonials in 1896 (Lagos to Ibadan). By 1911 it was in Minna, and by 1912 had reached Kano. By 1964 the rail had extended to Maiduguri.
All this was achieved before oil in less than 70 years. 59 years later how much can we say as Nigerians we added to that network. What improvements have we made?
Since then, other countries who did not even dream of such have made great advancements.
We had a head start but instead of making progress, we decided to go back 50 years every 10 years.
Today while other countries boast of advanced rail and road systems we have NOTHING to show for our early start. We started before the Singapore’s and Malaysia’s and they have now left us far behind.
The countries we equalled in the 1900’s are way ahead of us…The ones we shamelessly equalled in the 1960’s are ahead of us..Same with the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.
We are not even standing still…We are going back to 1896.
It is as if Nigeria made a conscious decision to accelerate backwards faster than other nations were going forward.
Unless we press the HARD RESET, we have no chance.
