Pursuant to the envisioned increase in vehicular movement across the country occasioned by the yuletide, the Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Dr Boboye Oyeyemi has ordered the immediate deployment of logistics, personnel and Special Marshals nationwide to entrench safety on the roads, enforce compliance on established road traffic rules, COVID-19 precautionary measure for commuters, and secure free flow of traffic for the motoring public along all corridors and other roads.

According to Bisi Kazeem, the Corps Public Education Officer, the Corps Marshal, also ordered strategic 24 hours Observatory at Commands along high volume of traffic/gridlock prone areas, Establishment of 11 Traffic Control Camps, full mobilization of 23 Help Areas, full mobilization of 46 Emergency Ambulance (Zebra) Points, Full mobilization of Road Side (RTC) Clinics, and 24/7 broadcast on National Traffic Radio 107.1 FM. He revealed that the directive is targeted at achieving a near zero road traffic crash throughout the period.

The 2020 Operation Zero tolerance commenced from Monday, Dec 12, 2020 spanning through to Monday, Jan 15, 2021 nation-wide. The operation which is programmed to run in shift as follows 0600hrs - 1400hrs, 1400HRS - 2000hrs, 2000hrs - 2200hrs, and Night Rescue teams on standby at all operational Commands is billed to cover the following critical corridors; Sokoto-Tambuwal-Jega-Birnin Kebbi corridor, Katsina-Kano-Wudil-Dutse-Azare-Potiskum corridor, Kaduna-Saminaka-Jos corridor, Abuja-Kaduna-Kano corridor, Okene-Ogori-Isua-Owo corridor, Makurdi-Otukpo-Obollo Afor-9th Mile corridor, Asaba-Abraka-Ughelli-Warri corridor, Ibadan-Ogere-Sagamu corridor, Sagamu-Mowe-Lagos corridor, amongst others.

Explaining some of the reasons for year 2020’s holistic approach to safer roads, kazeem noted that the Corps has observed that a key characteristics of the period over the years is an upsurge in traffic volume, impatience by motorists who may not have adequately planned their journeys, or motorists managing mechanically deficient vehicles to and fro their travel destinations.

According to him, the foregoing is known to be the major causes of chaos and indiscipline among all classes of road users, leading to crashes, fatalities, maiming of motorists and loss of property as well as traffic congestion/gridlocks.

He stated that the operation will cover the three broad areas of Traffic control/decongestion, Public enlightenment, and Enforcement, stressing that the enforcement is aimed at checkmating Excessive speeding, Dangerous Driving/Overtaking, Lane indiscipline/Route violation, Road Obstructions, Use of Phone while Driving, Overloading Violation, Seatbelt/Child restraint Use Violations, Passengers’ Manifest Violations, Mechanically Deficient Vehicles, Latching and Twist-Locks Violation, Abuse of Spy number plates on private vehicles, and massive constitution of Mobile Courts across the Nation.

While officers and Marshals will be mobilized with the necessary materials for Rescue Operations, the Corps’ operatives will be collaborating with Military units, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Directorate of State Services (DSS), NGO Ambulance Service Providers, National Network on Emergency Road Services (NNERS) and the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA).

The Corps Marshal also stated that the operatives will be charged with the responsibility of identifying alternative routes to assist motorists during gridlocks, and give notification of traffic distressed areas for intervention. As such, he called on the motoring public to utilise all FRSC social media handles (facebook.com//frscnigeria,Instagram.com//frscnigeria, twitter.com//frscnigeria, for necessary updates and in case of emergency, call the 122 toll free number and the National Traffic Radio live lines: 08052998090, 09067000015, and 08052998012 which are available means to reach FRSC to report Traffic situations anywhere in the Country.

Guardian UK

With its mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the Great Wall of China, Benin City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a place of ‘thievery and murder’. So why is nothing left?

This is the story of a lost medieval city you’ve probably never heard about. Benin City, originally known as Edo, was once the capital of a pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. The Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west Africa, dating back to the 11th century.

The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops, [in Egypt]”.

Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.

Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.

Barely any trace of these walls exist today.

Benin Wall

Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace.

When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great City of Benin”, at a time when there were hardly any other places in Africa the Europeans acknowledged as a city. Indeed, they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities in the world.

In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”

In contrast, London at the same time is described by Bruce Holsinger, professor of English at the University of Virginia, as being a city of “thievery, prostitution, murder, bribery and a thriving black market made the medieval city ripe for exploitation by those with a skill for the quick blade or picking a pocket”.

African fractals

Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”

At the centre of the city stood the king’s court, from which extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120-ft wide. These main streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower side and intersecting streets extended off them. In the middle of the streets were turf on which animals fed.

“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other,” writes the 17th-century Dutch visitor Olfert Dapper. “Adorned with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”

Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh water”.