Over the past year, I have traversed well over 7,000 KM of Nigeria’s vast landmass, crisscrossing Africa’s most populated country using several airborne aluminium tubes as my transport mode. From the MM2 Airport in Lagos (my personal favourite in the whole country), I have found my way to Owerri, Abuja, Kaduna, Ibadan, Kano, Ilorin and Port Harcourt in the space of a few weeks, and in my typical fashion, each trip has presented me with several epiphanies about Nigeria.
The most significant realisation I have reached about our not-so-dear country is that not many people actually travel at all. It’s easy to look at the bustling interstate bus parks around Lagos and get the idea that Nigerians are travellers – in particular, the cultural fixture of people from the Southeast commuting for business purposes creates the idea that moves across state lines is a key part of life in Nigeria. But looking down at the country from 30,000 feet in the sky, you come to a terrifying realisation.
Nigerians Do Not Travel As Much as You Think They Do
The first thing you notice once you leave the airspace of a populated city is just how few roads there are in this country. You cannot miss the few existing ones snaking their way across the lush green or dusty brown landscape. You realise that even if these few interstate highways are jammed to the brim with traffic (and they really aren’t), that is still not a lot of people or cargo moving around. Whether because of the sheer difficulty and cost of getting around Nigeria, or perhaps just because most Nigerians typically tend to remain near their area of birth, people and goods are just not moving around with the frequency and speed that a poor, developing economy needs.
Economics 101 dictates that the size and health of an economy are directly correlated to the frequency of interaction between markets and goods and services. In English, what that means is that the more goods and services are in circulation within an active market, the healthier your economy. It also means that the speed of moving those goods and services is also a key indicator of that economy’s health. The faster these goods move around the country, the more commerce is taking place, which means more employment, more disposable income to buy goods and services, more productive activity to satisfy the heightened demand, resultant GDP growth and eventually increased investment in production facilities which further feeds this virtuous cycle.
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It is no coincidence that the Germans built the autobahn as a solution to the country’s debilitating 1930’s recession – and it worked brilliantly too. Now building an autobahn is clearly outside of Nigeria’s technical or financial capacity right now (and I would literally need to have a death wish to drive on a Nigerian road that basically has no rules as if the existing ones are not deadly enough). Also, air travel is not a solution for fixing the speed and ease of movement problem because it is simply too expensive. Through my cross-country gallivanting, with the exception of Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, I don’t think I counted up to 100 passengers at the airports I landed at – those places were empty.
This leaves only one sensible, cost-effective, fast and achievable interstate mass transit solution for Nigeria.
It’s The Rails, Stupid!
What vehicle moves at 120 km/h without needing to pause for potholes, avoid broken down vehicles, dodge burnt-out vehicle carcasses and deal with potential security threats from armed bandits hiding in the bush? What vehicle can take more than 500 people at a go and get them to their destination quicker than a road trip? What is the vehicle which can take the equivalent of 20 road tanker loads of fuel and transport it safely and quickly without endangering anyone?
I think we all know the answer to that one.
There is a reason why, even in the USA – which had a stated policy to discourage municipal rail development on account of its allegedly being Marxist – trains are still a necessity. Amtrak is not winning awards for popularity, but guess what? The economy of the US would face some real problems without it. Across the developed world, trains make up such a fundamental part of national economic makeup that development of new railroads or cancelling existing routes can be an electoral issue. (Read up on HS2 in the U.K. for an example of how serious this can get.)
We do not need a network of railways optimised for a fleet of bullet trains like the Chinese or the Japanese – the simple standard gauge will do. A basic nationwide network of standard gauge railroads with trains running at just 80km/h will literally transform Nigeria’s economy. A single southwestern line linking Lagos to Benin via Abeokuta, Ibadan and Ore will hasten the development of the growing conurbation that is destined to merge Lagos, Ibadan and Abeokuta and one superheated economic region where people can live in Abeokuta and commute to work at the Lagos Marina.
A similar southeastern line linking Owerri, Enugu, Aba, Onitsha, Asaba, Benin, Port Harcourt, Calabar and Uyo would do something incredible for Nigeria’s economic integration. When spare parts from Nnewi can be ordered today and delivered to Abeokuta by train within 12 hours, that is literally how you build up some heat in an economy until it starts feeding off its own energy. Link this line to Abuja and the North via Benue, Kogi and Taraba, and you have solved the problem of harvest losses in Nigeria’s agricultural Middle Belt.
Solve that problem, and food can move to the urban centres more quickly, in greater quantities and for reduced prices. When that happens and people then have more disposable income to spend on things other than food, what happens?
Economic growth, that’s what.
