Driving safely, respecting traffic laws, using pedestrian bridges — these may look like private choices, but they are actually acts of public governance. Each decision signals whether we are committed to cohesion or to chaos, to care or to harm. When these responsibilities are neglected, danger becomes normal. Roads transform into battlegrounds, and tragedy becomes routine. Good governance can never flourish in such a culture, because governance is only as strong as the citizens who practice it daily.

Consider driver licensing. In principle, it should certify competence and safety. In practice, many acquire licenses through bribes or shortcuts, bypassing the education and testing that save lives. This is not just a story of corruption from above; it is also the story of citizens willing to collude in lowering the standards that protect us all. The same applies to law enforcement. Police officers who demand bribes find willing payers. Each exchange is not only an act of corruption but a reinforcement of impunity, a signal that rules are negotiable, safety optional.

Pedestrian behavior reflects the same pattern. Using a pedestrian bridge might add three minutes to a journey, yet many choose to sprint across expressways instead, risking their lives and those of drivers who must swerve to avoid them. This is not only personal negligence; it is a withdrawal of care from the community. Each time one of us disregards a small safety rule, we erode trust in the very fabric of society. We communicate that lives, our own and others’, are expendable.

This crisis of conduct cannot be solved by infrastructure alone. Roads can be repaired, bridges built, and lighting installed, but without a cultural shift in how we approach public life, the carnage will continue. What is required is not only investment in roads but investment in civic responsibility: a new ethic of accountability where citizens see themselves as custodians of safety and cohesion.

That ethic begins with education. Schools must teach road safety not as an afterthought but as a core element of civic learning. Community programs should reinforce safe pedestrian practices, responsible driving, and the moral weight of public responsibility. Campaigns must go beyond statistics and shock imagery to cultivate empathy: a recognition that each reckless act endangers families, futures, and lives that can never be replaced.

It also requires communities to model and reward good behavior. Drivers who follow the rules should not feel like outliers in a culture of speed and recklessness. Pedestrians who use bridges should not be mocked for “wasting time.” Cultural narratives matter: when we normalize carelessness, we celebrate harm; when we normalize care, we celebrate life.

Most importantly, accountability must become a shared ethic. Accountability is not a punishment imposed from outside. It is an ethic of presence, an ongoing practice of aligning our actions with the society we claim to want. To drive safely, to obey a traffic light, to resist bribery, to cross at the right place — these are small acts, but together they form the foundation of governance. Without them, no amount of reform from above will succeed.

Until we practice this ethic, governance will continue to fail us, because we will be failing one another. Infrastructure matters, but conduct matters more. The road does not kill. The road reflects us. If we fill it with recklessness, we inherit chaos. If we fill it with care, we inherit safety.

Let us not wait for the next tragic headline to awaken us. Let us instead become the kind of citizens who make safety ordinary, not exceptional. The time to act is not later, not when government improves, not after another tragedy. The time to act is now, on every journey, at every crossing, in every choice we make. Because governance begins with us, and it is in our daily care that the possibility of a safer, more cohesive Nigeria is born.