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Commuters Groan Over Fare Hike During Rush Hours: A Rejoinder By Yakubu Maitalata
“The 2008 budget builds upon and consolidates past macroeconomic and budgetary reforms. It gives priority to, and makes ample provision for improving physical infrastructure, particularly power and transportation, human capital development, the Niger Delta, and social safety nets….”
The above extract from President Umaru Musa Yardua’s budget presentation to the Joint Session of the National Assembly on Thursday, November 8 2007 connotes that there is a problem with the transportation sector of the Nigerian economy. Apart from being part of the seven-point agenda of the present administration, the transportation sector: railway, waterways, aviation and road, have been prioritized as one of those that require ample budgetary provision. It is a sector that is sadly characterized by different incidences that are better imagined than explained the most hit of all being the aviation where human lives are serially lost.
As it stands, road transportation is the most popular among the masses but surely rail transport system could have been the most preferred among the masses, if it were functional and available as road, because it is the cheapest both for intra-city and inter-city services. The preference for road system over others has increased of recent due to the carnage in the Nigerian aviation sector.
Lack of functional alternative transport system in Abuja Metropolis and the satellite towns denies the inhabitants the spice of life which is variety. It exposes them to shy-lock private transport opportunists who are smart at utilizing any slightest chance to hike transport fare even when there is no cogent reason save that there are few commercial vehicles plying the road at a specific time of the day. In Economics parlance it is referred to as demand being higher than supply.
The helpless condition of the Nigerian proletariat in the hands of commercial transporters could be traced to a number of variables. Inconsistency in government social service policies accounts for one among the many. It is further fueled by pervasive lack of maintenance culture. At a time in the annals of this country there was a Federal Urban Mass Transport System. What killed such a noble initiative? The government that initiated it passed away; greed and avarice among the operators; lack of maintenance culture; and quite a number of other factors surely contributed to the collapse of the agency.
Perhaps the present public-private initiative that gave birth to the Abuja Urban Mass Transit is a lesson from the past. Is it likely that the present arrangement would stand the test of time and be replicated elsewhere as a tested and trusted initiative? Time shall tell. But for the mean time demand is more than supply and is adversely affecting the Nigerian workers among others. Transportation is one of the social services a government provides to its citizens not just for its sake but for the fact that it is one of the hubs upon which the economy revolves. Workers need efficient transportation to go to work; farmers need efficient transportation to move their produce from the farm to the market; even the country needs efficient transportation to export and import. Then why the supply gap in the road transport system?
Nobody is expecting that any administration be it federal, state or local should procure buses and begin to carry workers to their places of work freely. Providing subsidized and functional vehicles for the work force to use while going to and coming back from their places of work is one of those characteristics of a responsive government and effective system. An efficient and effective road transport system enhances punctuality; reduces man hour lost in waiting for vehicle; reduces the stress of standing by the roadside for long waiting for a vehicle; it creates healthy competition between the public and private transport services. It is the absence of effective public transport system in place that provides a leeway for the commercial transporters to hike fare at will. Take for instance, sometimes in the morning going by commercial bus from Ado-Koroduma axis costs N180 to offices around Jabi and in the evening it costs N200 to get back home. On the other hand going by Abuja Urban Mass Transport costs N100 in the morning and same in the evening. This translates to a daily savings of N180 and weekly savings of N900, that is, about $1.5 per day and about $7.00 a week respectively. It further translates to $368.50 per annum. This is surely a pinhole in the meager earnings of workers. It is capable of widening the poverty line and lowering the per capita income of the Nigerian work force. A subsidized transport is certainly one of the means to blocking this pinhole and improving the quality of life of the lot of Nigerian masses.
The present Abuja Urban Mass Transport buses are quite timely but their mode of operation might need to be reviewed to fully impact on the beneficiaries. It is an indisputable fact that the bulk of work force in the Federal Capital Territory reside in the satellite towns. They come to work inside Abuja from these satellite towns in the morning and go back in the evening. Most of them cannot afford the heartrending rent of houses within Abuja metropolis. The present centralized arrangement where buses are operating from Abuja to satellite towns should be decentralized and reversed to operate from satellite towns to Abuja. The bulk of passengers operate from satellite towns to Abuja. I strongly believe the Company will cut cost if it operates a decentralized operation with outposts or districts located in major satellite towns like Mararaba in Nassarawa State, Kubwa in F.C.T, Suleja in Niger State and other major satellite towns. Agreed the company will need to invest in securing offices and parking lot in these satellite towns but with time they shall surely recoup their investment. A rough estimate of twenty buses assigned to each of these outposts or districts is an under estimation. Take for instance Mararaba UMT District will include but not limited to Nyanya and Karu both in F.C.T, Mararaba, Tudun wada, Aku village, Kabayi, Koroduma, Ado, Masaka, New Karu, New Nyanya, Kuchikau, Auta ba laifi, and so on. The rush hours are the target time for business, that is, 6.00 a.m to 9.00 am and 3.30 pm – 8.00 pm. Station at least two buses to service any of these satellite towns and you will confirm that twenty buses is an under estimation.
It is no news that workers usually wait for a minimum of thirty minutes to one hour in the morning for vehicles that are sometimes not forthcoming and should they come, workers would be jumping at them as if they are free of charge. The amount of time wasted waiting for vehicles in the morning, results in downtime due to late coming thereby depressing the spirit of punctuality and affecting productivity. If a worker wants to resume work early enough and cannot due to non availability of vehicles, we should not blame him for late coming? We should rather blame the system. It is not effective. An effective system should have in place sound and adequate transport systems, either publicly provided or through public-private partnership, to ensure that punctuality is instilled and sustained.
Mr. President our prayer is that the 2008 budget with N94.36 billion (Leadership newspaper, November 1 2007, P. 1) allocated for transportation would not be used in servicing recurrent expenditure of the transport sector rather than capital projects that will surely impact on the common man. Kindly take a chunk of the allocation and look out for private partners and jointly invest it in the provision of Mass Transport buses across the country. It would surely have a positive impact on the teeming population of the country.
Yakubu Maitalata kwassam wrote in from the Digital Bridge Institute, Abuja |