The need to evaluate Nigeria’s transportation policy

Transportation in Nigeria is one of the key sectors that needs serious and urgent attention because of its strategic importance and relevance as the ‘gateway’ to the success of our economy. In developed economies, transport investments and improved technology over the last century have brought about the reduction in the costs of transportation,which in turn stimulated growth and economic development in our country.

In developing countries, the current potential for transport policies to boost sustainable and inclusive growth appears to be larger because of the backlogs of low transport infrastructure investments in both rural and urban areas, very poor level of governance, inadequate regulations in the sector, rising social costs in terms of education, accidents, poor communication and information amenities in most African nations because of its poor infrastructural networks which makes transportation costs higher.

Transport investments are usually large and very transformative in nation building and development. The increase of world demand for transport services is growing at an alarming rate. For example, global demand for passenger transport services was predicted to grow from 26trillion passenger kilometres from 1990 to 103 trillion passenger kilometres in 2050 on average. Unfortunately, the rapid growth in transport demand strains the transport capacity unit as a result of inadequate expansion in transport physical infrastructure. Consequently, this situation poses capacity crisis which generates increase in congestion, pollution and safety problems in the system.

Expansion of the infrastructure such as building new roads has a limited role to play in solving transport problems.What is required to meet the anticipated demand is a well coordinated intermodal and innovative solution, which will deal with solving the challenges within all the modes. This is a solution that will promote sustainable development, which is defined as developmental plans that meets the needs of the present challenges without compromising the ability of future generations and meeting their needs also.

A strategy which achieves optimum improvements in inefficiency and accessibility without degrading the environment or increasing accident of any sort are clearly more sustainable. These include: economic efficiency in the use of transport resources, accessibility within and outside the city by the different modes available such as air, land, pipeline, railway and maritime and an enhanced environment including land use, safety and economic improvements.
Transport systems provide mobility, access and other benefits such as facilitating the productivity of the other sectors of the economy. At the same time transport contributes to several major environmental pressure including atmospheric pollution, traffic accidents and congestion, resources depletion, waste accumulation and disruption of nature and cities. In a similar vein, population growth, increased economic activity and growing incomes combine to generate higher demand for transport services which has some negative implications for development.

These impacts are economic, social and environmental issues which pose constrains to sustainable transport system. Following the growth in transportation demand and the consequent negative effects; sustainable transport policy has been adopted in many parts of the world, in order to deal effectively with this challenges and simultaneously provide optimal mobility and access. Along the same line, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) in 1993 introduced National Transport Policy (NTP), aimed at achieving sustainability in the transport system.

Although the NTP ought to guide decision-making in transport industry, it is observed that the policy has little influence. Despite the policy, for instance, Nigeria’s transport infrastructural facilities are deteriorating and quality of service is falling. Going by this occurence, it is apparent that, despite the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) huge expenditure in the transport sub-sector of the economy and the introduction of elaborate National Transport Policy coupled with the formulation of strategies for implementing the policy in 1993 and 2002 respectively aimed at promoting viable sustainable transportation, the system appears sluggish and unsustainable.
Obviously, in the light of the above, there is need to evaluate the National Transport policy(NTP) to determine the extent to which the policy has achieved its stipulated objectives. The NTP stipulated objectives are to achieve sustainability in the three pillars of sustainable transport. According to World Bank (World Resources Institute, 2004) the three pillars of sustainable transport are: Economic and financial sustainability, Social sustainability and Environmental sustainability.

The global attention to transport development has continued in recent years and world leaders recognised unanimously at the 2012 United Nations Conference on sustainable development (Rio) that transportation and mobility are central to sustainable development. Sustainable transportation surely can enhance economic growth and improve accessibility, it can achieve better integration of the economy while respecting the environment, improving social equity, health, resilience of cities, urban-rural linkages and productivity.

The UN Secretary –General, as part of his five year action agenda, identified transport as a major component of sustainable development. He subsequently established and launched in August 2014 a high level advisory group on sustainable transport (HLAG-ST), representing all modes of transport. The policy recommendations of the advisory group were submitted to the secretary –general in a global sustainable transport outlook report entitled ‘Mobilizing Sustainable Transport for Development’ released at the first Global Sustainable Transport Conference in November 2016. The importance of sustainable transport for countries in special situations is laos recognized by the international community, through the Istanbul Programme of Action for the LDC’S, the Vienna programme of Action for the LLDCs, the SAMOA pathway for Nsids, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the New Urban Agenda.
It is apparent in the light of the above that our nation needs to align with the modern trend and so the urgent need of the evaluation of our nations National Transport Policy is long overdue and this has the potential of stirring up speedy growth and development in our nation’s transportation sector to meet up with modern and international standards.

Festus Okotie