Toyota and Abuja-Kaduna Highway

The adversities brought upon the Nigerian state by criminal gangs in the South and Islamist terrorists in the North do not serve our country any good offering but smart entrepreneurs and business-branding people of multinationals are poised to reap hundreds of millions of dollars from our collective national foolishness.

It was a relief, albeit an undesirable one, to read the advert for Toyota’s Nigerian-centric medium-sized bus transport that is a veritable “armoured tank.” Yes, that is the state we have got ourselves in.

Imagine what should pass for a comfy coach on our highways now fitted with gun ports, assault-resistant body-plating, glass, and wheels plus a whole lot of offerings that will have our infantry corps green with envy. But that is how it should be now otherwise the vital Abuja-Kaduna road artery will be left to ruins.

True, the Abuja-Kaduna highway is necessary as a “de-congest route” to help ease the hectic stress of week-day lives at the Federal Capital Territory because, if that road were safe to traverse at all times, Northern Nigerians of all shades will repair to Kaduna for weekends and holidays, Kaduna still being some sort of de-facto capital of Northern Nigeria.

What the Toyota automobile company has done is to create a niche business that will define safe road transport in Nigeria; that “gun port” feature excites me greatly because the deterrence for road marauders who chose to rob, kidnap, rape, and decimate is sustained bursts of suppression fire from Gatling-like gun platforms mounted at spread-out locations within the bowel of the bus transport. The time has come to begin exterminating criminal elements from Nigerian roads and it does not matter if they are Fulani kinsfolk of our sitting president.

Sunday Adole Jonah,

Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State