Once again, a Dangote owned truck with registration
number XA 985 BBR rammed into two young men and crushed them to death. This
unfortunate incident happened on Wednesday 18th of July, 2012.
It is high time we said ‘Enough of this injustice’. Why
should heavy duty utility vehicles ply the same bad roads as regular vehicles?
Why do we not have railways as an alternative route for all these heavy duty
trucks after over fifty years of independence? Knowing they constitute a
driving force in the economy, why don’t we have structured time movement
peculiar to only them if they must really ply the same bad roads with regular
vehicles due to unavailability of alternative routes?
Most of these heavy duty truck drivers drive with
reckless abandon knowing fully well that their size gives them advantage and
will most likely not be hurt in anyway whatsoever
A burning question is for how long will the government
indirectly mortgage our lives just because of their own personal interest? We
have more than enough to build railways as an alternative route for heavy duty
vehicles and even if that would have proven too costly, how about construction
of an alternative road for this purpose? We all watch things deteriorate and
keep quiet whist moving on with so much ease. Are we all waiting for our close
relative/friend to fall victim before lending our voices to this course? Why
must we be content with putting up pictures of the affected as our display pictures
{DP} and writing RIP as the only means of speaking out?
Isn’t it time for the movement to change the course of
events? We have never been empowered as much as we are now and that power is of
the media. I grew up knowing the pen to be mightier than the sword but now that
I am grown and with the world becoming a global village, I have come to the
conclusion that the media is mightier than the missile. We all have these
devices from blackberries, ipads, iphones and androids, even the simpler phones
which can perform as much when loaded with internet data, so why must we only
use them to put up RIPs and display pictures of the departed when we can use
them to send out powerful messages to those who have sworn on oath to protect
us? Why can’t we use these devices to inquire into deaths we hear about
everyday and in turn send out strong messages which will definitely have its
multipliers effect? It is very simple: Once such messages are well written,
look for friends with high number of followers on twitter, mention them and ask
for a retweet, put the messages on a blog, facebook and ask people to pass
these messages to help the course. Then blackberry empowers you to send
broadcasts which in turn can be rebroadcasted until the message gets to the
policy makers. We have these tools on our hands but we seem not to realise how
potent they are. The power to demand the right to life lies in our hands, let us
all use it instead of keeping quiet and watch the government treat us like we
have got no value.
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