When East – West highway became bedroom of travelling Nigerians

In the opinion of Sir Fredrick Lugard, Transport means Development. This formed the rationale behind the development of transport infrastructure and system by the British colonial power . For instance the rail, road and port system in colonial Nigeria was designed by the British to help them in the easy evacuation of raw materials out of the country. Little consideration was given to transportation of people from one part of the country to another.

Adeyemi Babatunde better described the problem by contextualizing it as follows, he says the development of the transportation system by the colonizing powers met with a huge success despite the magnanimity of challenges that confronted them. Driven by the desire to establish control on the material resources of the various African territories for the economic benefits of the metropoles, these intimidating challenges were surmounted. Despite the motives of the colonialists in exploiting the resources of Africa through the establishment of transport system it should also be considered that its establishment brought about the revolution of African economy, urbanization as well as employment although, these were all accidental development. This was the game plan from 1914 up to the dawn of independence in 1960. However Nigeria has not thought of remodeling the transportation system for the realities of today ?

Since independence no serious or concerted effort have taken place to address deficiency in our human transportation strategies. While some few cities like Lagos , Abuja and Port Harcourt have in place very rickety transportation system. The rest of the country is lacking both the infrastructure and the vehicles for the movement of people conveniently from one place to another.

According to Abdul Ganiyu Sumaila Transportation Specialist at the Federal University Minna , the Nigerian transportation system has continued to wallow in crisis, and confronted by myriads of problems even to the point of near collapse or paralysis. Such problems can be summarized to include the following among others: I. Poor and inadequate planning II. Weak intermodal coordination III. Insufficient public transport to cope with ever increasing demand for movement IV. Urban traffic congestion V. Neglect of rural transport VI. Safety and security challenges and VII. Environmental pollution.

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Because of this massive, policy failure transportation in the country is more of a stress than an enjoyable exercise .Let’s take a look at the situation from the perspective of a few travelers during the yuletide . Juliet Bassey is a manager with a professional organization in the Central Business District in Alausa , Lagos. According to her we left Lagos 6am on the 22 December 2020 with our destination as Uyo in Akwa Ibom State. Going by my earlier experience travelling this route I guessed we would be pulling into Uyo in about 12/14 hours after our departure. We arrived Uyo after about 30 hours , I slept on the hard floor of the transport company with little or no facilities for cleaning and hygiene in Asaba . The distressful part is that I paid 50% more for the journey in question. Transportation seriously warned against movement after 8 pm during the yuletide period . Vital man hours wasted because our roads are longer safe to ply after certain hours of the day. Chinedu Obi a veteran journalist in one of the leading newspaper houses had a similar experience during his journey from Lagos to Imo State . The logical question at this juncture again would be Why has Nigeria not thought of remodeling the transportation system for the realities of today ? For instance transportation in Lagos should be via land , sea and rail this would evenly distribute the pressure and ensure longevity of the infrastructures in place.

Enormous pressure is put on our roads and our rail transport is still crawling after over 100 years of experience . The Indians and Chinese have had a go at helping us and every exercise is followed by tales of corruption and process mismanagement.

Julie Bassey wonders why we do not have an efficient sea transportation service from Lagos to Calabar or a rail service from Lagos across the South West to the heartland of the South Eastern states . She complained that the government is adept at sloganeering about transport and security instead of taking concrete action to provide basic transportation facilities after five years in the chair and at the helm. Other travelers have also wondered if the only place that is safe is Nigeria’s air space , can the aviation sector cope with the possible influx and respond to consumer demand ? This is very doubtful if the experience of the past few years is anything to go by.

In the opinion of Abdul Ganiyu Sumaila what has remained disturbing today is the continuing inability of the various solutions to effect significant improvement in the transport system. Rather the situation appears to be getting worse. Our mobility crisis has been exacerbated by the fact that there is yet no clearly articulated policy for transport development in Nigeria. This position is anchored on the general consensus that there exists in the transport system today an imbalance between resource allocations to the various modes, gross inadequacy of existing infrastructural facilities, and the misalignment between the objectives of transport parastatals, and operators, and the material and organisational resources for them.

These, no doubt, are fundamental issues which a national policy should strive to address and resolve. It can therefore be concluded that the persistent inefficiencies in the Nigerian transport system that has caused ten of thousand to sleep in Buses may be attributable to policy inconsistencies, defects and weaknesses which have resulted in piece-meal and uncoordinated transport programme planning and implementation. So who do we call next to fix our transportation problem ? One wonders why government have not adopted the multiple platform approach to transportation that have been suggested by many analysts for many years. Nigeria must remodel its transportation system for the realities of today to be met.

Michael Umogun works with Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administration of Nigeria