We can learn from how they get snow off roads in winter

Every day during the winter months in Europe and in North America, snow falls like rain does in a manner that we sometimes describe as torrential rainfall. In truth, torrential rainfall can both be mild and monstrous, depending on what nature has in stock for mortal man and his earth. If the rainfall is monstrous it could be described as a storm – as in stormy weather, stormy climate, and stormy rainfall. This can be dangerous. In fact, it is often dangerous, as stormy rainfall has been known to consume lives and property; and it is no respecter of anyone – man or woman, girl or boy, young or old, weak or strong, rich or poor, or whatever division you possibly can create. As a matter of fact, what you can call a tempering on the violence of a stormy rainfall is the difference in the degree of devastation that is meted out to different classes of people, with regard to their capacity to prepare themselves to weather the storm (excuse the pun); nothing, indeed, to do with richness or poorness.

So, in the winter months in Europe and North America and all other such places where you are likely to have stormy snowfall, the whole place tends to be covered up in snow – roads, railway tracks, some types of buildings, airports (including runways) – that would make you think life should be on hold. If you were in a developing country like Nigeria and you are the type of person who exercises their mind with happenings in the world outside of your immediate environment, I am sure you must have asked these questions: “How do these people deal with this problem? How do they move about with snow everywhere? How does it happen that railways still function, cars still drive on the roads even where the snow is falling daily in the winter months?” I bet you’d be asking that question if the developing country you live in (probably Nigeria) is one where things don’t get to work as they ought to!

Nigeria has a tropical climate. As such what it and its people suffer from mostly is excessive heat from the sunshine that it gets bathed in. I have often tried to have a debate around which of the two is better, between tropical and wintery weather. They each have their benefits; at least it helps the world go round and we are able to benefit from the variety that nature has to offer as a result. But when it comes to living in a weather condition, I think the sunshine trumps the snow for me.

Our country’s location and weather condition have been very kind. Natural disasters, including extreme weather conditions, are not common here. I am not too sure if this is the reason why there is huge government complacency, including leaving so many things, like fighting a rag-tag army (when it was truly rag-tag), until very late when it became the divide between winning and losing an election. When there are extreme weather conditions in Europe or the United States – snowstorms, avalanches, hurricanes, landslides, rainstorms – I am sure there are many people in Nigeria, watching on their television, who hold their hearts in their mouths and then go down on their knees to thank God that we do not suffer such natural disasters. In a snowy weather in Europe, the roads are all covered up making them difficult to drive on. You could have days and weeks of this condition, but what you find is that the managers of the situation are always prepared for this season. Someone once looked at the amount of snow falling in Switzerland while driving to the airport, and seeing that the roads have been made drivable by cars, asked: “If we had snow all over the roads in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano or Benin City, would it not amount to a shut-down of these cities or the country as a whole?” How is it possible that they get it right for planes to take off and land even in very snowy weather conditions? There is a lot to learn from this.

Without meaning to sound cliché(ic), it is not out of place to say that the difference between the world just described and our world is like night and day. But we know that night can be conquered and has been conquered in some controlled environments with lights. The lesson is one about how a country and its leaders think of how things should be done. In other words, what are the minimum standards that underpin how things are done? How do we get ourselves ready to face the unexpected? Can we at least agree that we need to prepare? If we agree that this is necessary, should we not work to ensure that we do so? What I have noticed in following developments in Nigeria is that we spread ourselves too thinly. We want to appear to be doing this and doing that. In the end we don’t get anything fully done. Our leaders’ eyes are often off the ball; and they take them off so comprehensively quickly. This is not helped by the fact that commitment is in short supply. Selflessness is in short supply. Almost everything is turned around to ensure that personal benefits accrue from an official engagement.

And here is the difference. If snow were to fall in Nigeria, knowing that in Europe and North America, to clear snow from the roads to make them drivable on, governments down to local councils ensure that enough snow salt is available and deployed on the roads before it starts snowing, we would have been experiencing major disasters. In fact, in Nigeria we would have had it turned into a snow salt subsidy, where everybody gets involved! Or you have the budget for snow salt delayed at the National Assembly, and by the time it’s passed there’d be accidents claiming lives of innocent Nigerians. And nothing would happen! Life would go on!

PHILLIP ISAKPA