IGBOZURUOKE MEDIA

By Boniface Alanwoko,

The well-known maxim that businesses are better run by private concerns, seems to be in reverse with the handling of the Imo Transport Company (ITC), by Global GINIKA Services Ltd., the concessionaire, whom governor Rochas Okorocha, of Imo State handed the hitherto thriving company to, immediately he assumed office.
Having been drawn to that company by their antecedence, I have remained their loyal customer for over 10 years, traversing the length and breadth of this country by their buses. Therefore, it was a habitual thing when I wanted to travel to Owerri on October 12, 2016, and chose to travel by ITC, after a long break.
I began to get an incline of the delinquency that has overtaken the company once I arrived their terminal at Charity Bus Stop, Oshodi, Lagos, where I met a lady-ticket officer who reveled in allotting certain bus’ seats to the highest bidder and was adept at hoodwinking commuters, including myself, into abandoning their balance with her.
The terminal itself was in near chaos as drivers engaged managers who remained insensitive and kept allotting courier loads to the buses, without giving a thought to the safety and comforts of commuters in a shouting match.
Due to these squabbles and efforts to squeeze the overflowing loads into the 14 or 16-seater buses, our journey was unnecessarily delayed that we left the terminal at 9.05 am, despite my arriving there by 6.30 am
Due to the unnecessary delays, our driver became exasperated, fidgety and reckless on the road as he tried to get to our destination early enough.
Thus, most of the time he was on high speed, but for all his dangerous efforts, we still couldn’t reach Owerri till it was some minutes to 8pm. In the midst of that, a grand-mother, travelling with us lost her hand luggage. Considering all this, the driver earned my pity as he must discharge at their Owerri office and still head to Orlu to deliver numerous packages forced on him by the insensitive managers at their Lagos office.
If my experience on October 12, 2016, could be described as an unpleasant one, what I had on my return journey to Lagos was a nightmare.
Determined to consign my October 12, journey experience as a lapse on ITC management, I decided to return to Lagos on October 19, 2016, via, the same company, at least, to convince myself that what happen during my first journey was an oversight.
That day, I arrived at their Owerri terminal at 7.02 am and did not commence my journey till 9.15 am. At the counter, a lady, who looked bored this time cheerlessly said there were only two seats remaining in a second bus to Lagos and if I would take one? I chose seat number 14, which incidentally was the last seat at the back of the 14-seater bus.
When our announcement to depart came, it was to board a ramshackle-looking bus, the type Ndi Igbo call Akpruruka Homer Bus. It was the first generation of Toyota- Hiase 14-seater (Homer) bus and had the original ITC-painted body of oxblood and white colours. It conveyed a boredom as it stood in the morning sun like a rejected junk box.
One drawback with the modus operandi of the ITC Company, just like most Nigerian transport companies is the issue of commuters not being privy to the vehicles they would travel in, until the vehicle’s plate number is announced and they are harried to board the vehicle and start their journey.
In this way, you will only know the vehicle you will be travelling with when its number plate is announced. As a result, commuters whose fares had already exchanged hands and who might have wasted all their time at the terminal may have no alternative other than to board whatever vehicle is allocated to them.
That was the situation I found myself that morning. However, if I had known that the bus, the callous ITC managers at Owerri, allocated to carry us had no horn, had a stiff-steering wheel, a vandalized dashboard, had no air conditioner but a faulty fuel injection, I would have refused to board such vehicle even if I had to forgo the fare I had paid. Because of where I was sitting I could not notice all these until the bus developed a fault just after the Benin-by-pass.
I should have known what would come when the driver, who looked more like a Nollywood-gangster actor than a driver further, delayed us as he locked us inside the bus for 20 munities and kept shuttling within the offices. He did this without any regard for our discomfort in that morning heat, before asking his colleagues to give the bus a push so that it could start.
At the end of another unnecessary delay when we were taken to a filling station within the premises for our bus to be fueled, we finally left in what turned out to be one of the most dangerous journey I have undertaken.
Immediately we left the Owerri-town traffic hiccups caused by governor Okorocha’s chaotic road constructions, the bus shot out like a rocket from an over-heated furnace even before we got adjusted to our seats.
At this time, the driver has notched up to what seemed to me like a speed of 120mp/h. It was at this juncture we realized the bus had no air conditioner. The whole place became stuffy and the fumes of PMS that assailed my eyes and nostrils nearly made me to pass out.
As we approached Okija, the worst nearly happened as the driver, now on top speed, narrowly missed ramming into a lumbering truck that he had seen, far off before we even got close. Terribly shaken and angered at what we considered a reckless overtaking without a toot of our bus’ horn, we began to rein abuses on the driver only to realize from him that the bus had no horn and that the steering was stiff and could not allow him to maneuver the vehicle easily.
As if nothing had happened, the driver quickly resumed his over speeding towards Onitsha, on a road that has numerous curves and always busy with traffics. It was at this juncture I became alarmed and realized that I have become a victim of a misplaced loyalty.
After the driver got through the horrible potion towards the Benin City Bye pass, the bus spluttered and began to crawl. The driver thought it was a fuel-pump case and borrowed a fairly-used one from a colleague.
At a garage where the driver stopped to fix the fuel pump, I then had the opportunity to look the vehicle over as all commuters had disembarked. I was alarmed when I noticed the dashboard had been vandalized. It then follows why the bus had no horn, a speedometer but a stiff steering wheel. Equally damning was that the driver had no extra cash other than the amount to fuel the bus.
When I confronted the driver, he confessed that the bus was not his usual, but one that was seized from another driver and being rehabilitated.
The last lap of our journey to Lagos was horrifying as the driver drove at a nerve-racking speed, even when he had to drive against the traffic due to the numerous closures of portions of the roads by the contractors rehabilitating the roads.
Since, he had no horn and could not warn other vehicles, before overtaking them, which in most cases he did while on top speed, on three occasions, we nearly crashed into heavy trucks that swerved in our direction without an incline of an approaching bus.
When I finally alighted at Anthony Bus Stop, Lagos, and the driver came down to get my luggage, I looked myself over, looked the driver over and looked the bus with plate number XR 904 LND over, made a sign of the cross and thanked God for preserving my life one more time.