•An inter-modal transportation.
Nigerians are still feeling the heat of recession, though the government has promised them a reprieve this quarter.But for now,travelling from place to place is not easy. ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE reports
Is the economy inching towards recovery? While the bigger picture posted by the government is positive, Nigerians reeling under the recession say the economy is still sick.
To them, the bigger picture matters little because they are disconnected from it. With a high unemployment rate of 13.9 per cent, inflation perching permanently on double digits at 17.78 and interest rate that seemed unrelentingly high at 14 per cent (all indices by tradingeconomics.com), the masses still feel cheated out of the pie of change.
The impact of the poor economy is most felt in the area of public transportation where the low purchasing power of average Nigerians, especially urban dwellers, has impacted negatively on travel patterns.
For instance, it is not uncommon to see many urban dwellers resorting to biking, or trekking to cut down cost of transportation, which reduces people’s disposable incomes.
Executive beggars
More appalling is the new trend of neatly-dressed Nigerians, who throng bus stations in many urban centres, begging for bus fares. Many even confidently board the buses and beg for fares from equally-yoked fellows on board; or where they had to pay for the fare before boarding, see how they could get those around to part with a token to get them on board.
The Transport Fare Watch in its report, which covers a wide range of transportation modes for February, such as charge per person for bus journeys within cities, inter-city state routes, journeys on motorcycles (okada or tricycle per drop), waterway passenger transport and air fares for single journey on specified routes, said the average fare paid by commuters for bus journey within the city increased by 0.01 per cent month-on-month and by 50.42 per cent year-on-year to N122.85 in February from N122.83 in January this year.
For average Nigerians, these increases further eroded their disposable income and exposed them to poverty, deepening their pains of the recession.
According to experts, low and middle income Nigerians, who formed over 80 per cent of consumers of public transportation spend over 45 per cent of their monthly earnings on transportation.
“The pattern usually is that these people, who could not afford to live within the urban centres due to prohibitive cost of housing, go to the fringes where accommodation is cheaper from where they commute to the urban centres, where usually their places of work are situated, and from where they must commute daily to and from work,” a transportation expert, Mr Biodun Otunola, said.
Gaping needs
Otunola, who is the managing director of Planet Projects, a firm getting increasingly visible in providing traffic gridlock solutions and transport infrastructure transformation in about 22 states, including Lagos, said majority of those who fall into this category spend between 45 per cent to 60 per cent of their income on transportation.
“How would a worker, who has spent between N20,000 and N25,000 out of a N45,000 monthly salary on transportation survive? With the erosion of their disposable income, which reduces their purchasing power and further pummeled by a depreciating economy, they are open to temptations which they could leverage to survive throughout the month till another pay day,” he said.
Describing transportation as a first line charge sector, where payment for services cannot be postponed, Otunola said the economy would continue to tilt towards negative growth until the government addressed the gapping demands for public transportation in the country.
Public transportation refers to the means provided by the government to ensure access to affordable, reliable and safe means of transportation to larger populations of urban dwellers to gain physical access to the goods, services, and activities they need for their livelihoods and well-being.
In a journal of Urban Planning and Transport Research, Vol 3, 2015, Taofiki Salau, writing on “Public transportation in metropolitan Lagos, Nigeria: analysis of public transport users’ socio-economic characteristics”, said public transportation is critical to cities in both the developed and developing world because it reduces reliance on private car-ownership by providing an affordable alternative for urban commuters.
Demand for public transport service is a direct consequence of the quality of urban living environment, household, community, and social networks.
In a megacity such as Lagos, where 80 per cent of its 20 million population could have make daily passenger trips by public transport, Salau said the active working population has increasingly relied on private cars for all their travels and not just the journey-to-work.
“More than 75 per cent of the public transport users were found to be within the active working age bracket of between 25 and 65 years, majority (60 per cent) of which are males. Corresponding to that increased reliance on the public transport, auto-ownership is low with 52 per cent of the households owning no vehicle, and 26 per cent of households just one vehicle. While these aggregate statistics confirm the extreme low auto dependence of metropolitan Lagos, they mask important variations by density areas of the city and among socio-economic groups. There are important differences in travel behaviour by income, age, and gender among others. Auto-ownership, mobility rates, means of transport, trip distance, trip purpose and time of day of travel vary from one group to another. Such differences can be crucial in designing equitable transport policies at all government levels,” Salau added.
Agreeing with Salau, Otunola said it was time governments at all levels took public transportation provision as a social service in which they ought to massively invest.
According to him, with the nation’s growing population and a rural-urban migration that remains at all high, even the Federal Government, which owns over 60 per cent of all road networks in the country could run public transportation on those routes while the states complement in their various locations.
Public transportation, experts reasoned, remains the “most reasonable way” for the government to redistribute wealth and make more funds available to the low and medium income workers, who formed the bulk of commuters that must be provided with a decent form of transportation to ease their travel demands.
The way to go, according to Otunola, is for the government to re-prioritise policies and programmes. “Governments, whether at federal or state level, must spend more on public transport and less on roads and attendant infrastructure,” Otunla said, citing an example of the city of New York, the United States (US) second biggest city and world’s number one megacity, which has a $24 billion yearly budget on transportation.
Like other sectors such as health, education, poverty eradication, agriculture, which previous governments, especially that of the defunct Western Region, was known, governments must take a cue by adding transportation as key element of the social sector and invest massively in all modes in the interest of the masses.
“The West consciously invested in transportation for the sake of their masses. Britain heavily subsidises tarnsportation such that all tickets are subsidised to the tune of about 60 per cent, while South Africa equally subsidises to about 50 per cent. Transportation is about the only sector that the government could leverage to improve the quality of lives of their people.”
He listed the inherent advantages inherent in subsidising transportation, to include improved disposable income, cleaner environment, and reduction in traffic congestion, improved standard of living, and a more livable environment for all her citizens.
Drawing a particular reference to Lagos State, Otunola said changing the focus of the government from unending conundrum of road construction and the trenchant traffic gridlock for which cost the state about three billion man-hour yearly, about $1 billion (N368 billion), was behind the bus reform initiative of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.
Ambode, in February, revealed plans to replace the rickety yellow buses that have given the state its uneviable reputation of having the most ungovernable roads, with modern bigger buses that would address the missing issues of comfort, safety and reliability. The government intends to inject 5,000 such new buses under a N100 billion road infrastructure bond to be sourced from the nation’s capital market.
Conclusion
Getting the transportation sector right, according to experts, would help resolve several challenges that have held the nation backward. But it requires allowing professionals to handle the planning, implementation, deployments and execution of transportation programmes of each tier of government.
To get it right, the government, Otunola insisted, must run the sector as a social service and heavily subsidise it for the masses and the low and middle income earners, who form the bulk of any nation’s population.
The template should be right, he said, but it should also be handled by those who know why the government is intervening in the sector. Only doing that would bring the desired fresh air that Nigerians badly need. Can this start now?
It just might, Otunola again asserted, but that ‘s only if Lagos gets its bus reform initiative right. If this happens, other states, including the Federal Government, would take a cue.
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