As the yearly Christmas holiday migration from Nigeria’s big cities to the hinterrland reaches a crescendo, the cost of cross-country buses have gone up in the neighbourhood of 100 percent, propelled by geometric leaps in demand and fuel shortages which government acribes to speculation
and unscrupulous practices.
A visit to motor parks across Lagos State, which is home to 21 million inhabitants, over 12 percent of Nigeria’s population, revealed long queues and higher ticket costs for buses going to the hinterland.
Popular destinations from Lagos , are Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ogbomoso, Ilorin, Benin, Asaba, Enugu, Onitsha, Portharcourt, Calabar, Kaduna, Kano , and Jos.
At the ticket sales counter of most commercial transport companies, a one way ticket from Lagos to Port-Harcourt had increased from from N3,500 to over N7,500, while Enugu went from N3,200 to over N6,800, and Abuja has the highest fare of N8,850, against N4,000 which it was about two weeks ago.
Investigations carried out by our reporters showed that the figures were about the same across transport companies visited. These include the Young shall Grow, Peace Mass Transport, Ekeledilichukwu, amongst others, with ABC transport having the highest fares.
“You may buy double this amount in three days time if you don’t buy your tickets now. The fuel crisis and the Christmas ceremony is not helping matters at all and the rush is causing the increase in fares,” a staff of the Young Shall Grow transport told passengers.
Meanwhile, Tajudeen Agbede, Chairman, National Union of Road Transport workers advised Dayo Mobereola, Lagos State Commissioner for Transport to focus on policies that will facilitate the operations of commercial vehicles.
Agbede said road transport remained the major means of transportation in the state, stressing that it should not be neglected.
He added “It is not easy to engage in transport business in Lagos, so the new commissioner should come up with programmes that will help us.
“Many of our roads are bad and this has been causing traffic congestion and accidents; we need good roads.”
In motor parks in Jos, the Plateua State capital, vehicles heading to Lagos, Ibadan and Onitsha are witnessing relatively high patronage.
Transportation to Onitsha which previously cost N2,500 is now N3,050, while the fare to Lagos and Ibadan by luxury bus is N5,500 and N5,000 kombi bus.
Emmanuel Okechukwu, a staff of one of the luxury bus companies heading to the eastern part of the country said the increase in the transportation fare was due the hike in fuel price and the Christmas rush.
The security of crosscountry road transport is said to continue to improve significantly over the past years, following the introduction of ATM and other eletronic payment schemes which have reduce the use of carrying of cash.
The demand for cash, Point of Sales (POS) and online transactions has reached the season’s high as customers are rushing to do their last minute Christmas shopping. This has resulted in hundreds of failed transactions on Automated Teller Machine (ATM), Pos and online service portals.
With the commencement of cashless policy in Lagos in 2012, and two years later in 2014 across the country, many Nigerians have adopted the method of making online or PoS payments with their debit cards. However many Nigerians are full of complaints.
According to CBN, there were 15,000 ATMs’ in the country as at June 2014, a significant increase from about 11,000 as at the end of 2013.
As electronic payments gain ground, the number of connected card readers has increased to more than 180,000 from 5,000 before 2012.
A recent survey showed that of all the bank channels, customers used ATMs 68% of the time, with most customers using the ATMs more than once a week. The ATM has assumed great importance as the barometer of a bank’s brand as far as customers are concerned.
The survey also shows that the local online shopping sector grew from N49.9 billion to N62.4 billion between 2010 and 2011 and from N62.4 to N78billion the next year. These figures keep growing year on year. However customer’s complaints on cash alternative transactions remain the same.
The Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) stated that since January 2014, they have seen tremendous growth in electronic payments trends on its platforms.
“In July 2014, NIBSS for the first time since its history recorded over 10,000,000 epayment transactions on its platform during the month.”
However, it did not state how many of these transactions were successful.
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