By Taiye Olaniyi
Transportation geographers world over know that the human and geographical environment interplay in such a way that such considerations must be given before one kind of transportation (mode of transportation) or the other is introduced.
The Railway is one transportation mode that takes great cognisance of the environmental terrain, the topographic simulation, soil structures, water and vegetal covers in their variegated manners before certain routes are considered for the railway lines.
Railway is a hybrid of scientific, mechanical engineering, land and quantity surveying including technological and sociological orderings.
It is submitted that the inception of rail transportation dates back to about three centuries ago in Britain.
Mr.Oladele Osunbote in his book entitled “Railways in Nigeria” alluded to its history as dating back to when Sir William MacGregor declared open 3 feet 6 inches narrow gauge railway line from Lagos to Ibadan on March 4, 1901.
Furtherance to this historical sequencing, The Nigerian Railway was constituted by the amalgamation of the Lagos Government Railway (LGR) and the Baro -Kano Railways (BKR) on October 3, 1912.
However, from 1898-1901 Lagos -Ibadan rail construction later at different stages spanned through to Jebba 1901-1909, Kano,Baro,Jebba-Minna, Port Harcourt-Enugu, Enugu -Makurdi and to other places till it reached Gombe- Maiduguri between 1963 to 1964.
The British Rail system as was initiated in Nigeria at inception and several decades later hover around both political administrative and economic interests.
Though the expanse of Nigeria is so vast, railway lines, routes and nodal points were seemingly less in the nation’s geographical area coverage.
Not minding the aforesaid, the railway work space provided the majority of the workaday type, in tasks and humdrum as the movement of freight and commuter passengers.
Many of the coaches then had innumerable passengers experiencing rail transportation just as the waggons freight animals like cattles including other goods like food items from the north to south, east and west where the railway lines pass and criss-cross through.
Wonders of nature feature prominently along the routes and the geographic areas once covered by rail lines.
The railway lines with its iron casted technology, the micro and mega stations remained connecting hubs for people and their goods mostly hauled for business transactions.
In due course, as an economic centripetal for convergence, so also it graduated to being centrifugal for the movement of people and their goods.
The railway later graduated to being spots for the advancement of thoughts for impressions and expressions and sociological inferences about the beauty inherent in rail transportation.
The railway facilitated social contacts and connection of staff of different categories with those of the community where the railway passes through.
Slightly more elitist than the local community, the railway staff met in clubs for relaxation, established football club including the introduction of the St John Ambulance for on the spot and clinical health services.
The railway was an impetus to what in, economic geography, is referred to as “business district” in many railway towns and thus a viable input to the process of urbanisation towns and cities.
Many cultural and social interactions, inter tribal and inter religious marriages were equally facilitated in the railway towns of old.
Marveling at the engineering dexterity associated with the railway and its arrays of staff, numerous members of the community used to get excited when a family member or friends in the community had the privilege of working in the railway and thus could sponsor their children in schools for formal education.
Once upon a time, the accommodation of the railway staff was unique in their architectural masterpieces as they now graduate as iconic sites and for heritage preservation and promotions.
Whereas the British colonialists for the wants of influence in both the political administration and economic interests expanded their milieu of rail transportation in Nigeria up till the 70s and early 80s.
The Indians and the Chinese companies later found incursion and moments when they administered their economic interests through the portals of the Nigerian Railway.
The Chinese are here, the second round, especially when geopolitical and economic interests predominate worldwide and are getting too stiff and troubling in dimensions.
Most times, the Chinese are somehow known or considered notorious for building the best of edifices and manufacturing the best of products in their home country but then could play pranks and trade in politics of products, projects and services in other lands.
The changing trends in the environment and crises therein, the climate change crisis everywhere are so discomforting for project planning and administration.
When even weather is forecast to warn on an impending danger, to what extent is Nigeria and its citizens capable of forestalling the damaging effects of flood and erosion along the railway lines?
How feasible or possible can Nigeria and the Nigerian Railway Corporation prevent the corrosion of railway engines, coaches, and the likes from the debilitating impacts of high solar insolation arising from high temperature and sunshine?
The political governance and system in Nigeria doesn’t seem to support the continuity of foresight, good planning and administration.
To one’s dismay, personalities that are political do jettison good organisational policies for mere earthly political gains.
For both internal and external, politics can be withering to good aspirations of workers and thus dim resilient disposition to serving one’s fatherland patriotically.
The railway lines today are strewn with miscreants building shanties and kiosks along the railway lines and living filthy and dumping refuse here and there without considering the dangers to lives of railway users for their movement and goods.
Insecurity to lives, kidnapping and banditry are a menace everywhere for everyone and in almost everything.
The vandalizaion of not only the railway lines, the coaches and choice artefacts including the railway heritage iconic sites somehow becloud the ability for credible results to the usual dictum of, “Good Thinking, Good Product” as the current management and staff of the Nigerian Railway Corporation may wish to file out to the citizens.
If man then is the problem, he again has to be the solution.
As grandiose the plan may be for the people, it equally has to be planning with the people at the different stages within the corporation and outside of it, in the communities within the geopolitical and economic spaces of Nigeria.
Since technology rarely stays stagnant, it behoves the Railway Corporation and Management to up skill and prepare the generality of its staff with modern trends along with corporate governance.
Community relations in terms of outreach programme for and with communities, states government and other stakeholders are a “sinequanon’ for an effective security measures and the protection of the railway staff and the property strewn over where they are located.
Customer service may have to be updated for all categories of staff, just as the highly placed that have access to funds that should go round should be mindful of accountability, transparency and honesty of purpose.
All said and done, it is a truism that “Today is yesterday’s tomorrow, are you moving forward in thoughts and conducts’?
Think about it.
Similarly, it is important to note too as a reflection that life today in whatever one’s position and who one is and where, according to Oliver Goldsmith:
‘You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips’.
Think About It.
Taiye Olaniyi, is a retired Postman
