Establishment Of Transport And Logistics Policy For The Country
A significant aspect of the stated chaos in the existing transport sector is that since independence, about 55 years ago, there has been no single comprehensive transport policy. What we have been experiencing is merely draft after draft of government intentions. To restore order to the sector and guide the nation towards overall development of both the existing and future progress of the transport sector, an important step, that supports professionalism and regulation of the transport sector towards value creation to the economy of the country, is a viable national transport policy.
The Road Transport Subsector
Over 96% of physical distribution and movement of people and goods within the country are by the road mode. This over bearing dominance of the road mode has had a huge negative impact on the overall projected growth in agriculture, industries, solid mineral resources as well as spatial interaction of people across the nation and therefore requires immediate and urgent action. An important challenge of this dominance is a continuous high rate of fatality, due in part, to the road safety situations, despite the significant progress made by the Federal Road Safety Commission. Two areas to address here are urgent repairs and maintenance of major routes that include the following:
Major Routes that Require Urgent Attention: There are some existing major Routes (Roads) that require urgent intervention of palliative repairs and maintenance. Second immediate intervention is to enhance the tremendous and significant success achieved by the FRSC in the area of post-crash measures, particularly road safety education and provision of post-crash equipment and vehicles.
Public Transportation And The Use Of Non Conventional Transport System
Nigeria, in 2015, is more urbanized as close to 60% of the population are living in places designated as urban centres and cities. More significantly, is the increasing urbanization rate, coupled with rapid-city growth and the sprawling of some urbanized settlements. In this regard, public transportation is a basic prerequisite to ensure efficient, effective, convenient, comfortable and cost effective means of mobility for Nigerians in general, particularly the majority that are disadvantaged either by age, income, gender or physical disability. With over 105 million Nigerians living in the cities, the provision of mass transit transport system is a must, both by road and rail system.
Large passenger capacity buses must be introduced in the cities and consequently a gradual reduction of small- sized mini buses and the use of motorcycle (Okada) as commercial public transport. Some cities and states have made success of these but the role of the federal government is to support assemblage plants of large passenger capacity buses across the regions in the country. This is because of additional economic gain of the promising auto market for Nigeria, which can spread to the entire West African and Central African sub regions. In addition, Federal government support for the establishment of the bus assemblage plants, serves the purpose of employment, revenue generation, engineering, creativity and auto mechanical industrialization. Large capacity passenger bus transportation system also assists in the reduction of traffic congestion as well as sustainable healthy environmental implications which are enormous and beneficial.
Public Road Safety And Vehicle Inspection Administration
The dominance of road transport system in the country for the movement of goods, services and people, has been accompanied by unsustainable public transportation system, high rate of road transport accidents and inadequate vehicle inspection system administration. The challenges of road safety and vehicle inspection also include inefficient transport operational use of rickety vehicles, lack of way bridges, overloading and over speeding, minimal use of contemporary technology in traffic management, multiple traffic agencies, inter-agency rivalry and cross purpose working interactions.
The severity of the traffic crashes, in which about 8000 people were killed in 1987, has been reduced to about 6000 people, killed in 2014, being mindful of significant population growth between the two periods and high rate of vehicle ownership. The FRSC has made a significant progress in the reduction of road traffic accidents as the lead agency in road transport safety and traffic management. However, FRSC and the vehicle Inspection Agencies must be strengthened through contemporary safety initiatives, introduction of speed limiters in all commercial vehicles, enforcement of speed limits on all roads, the use and strict enforcement of safety gargets by commercial motorcycle operators, promotion of the use of non-motorized transport culture, including cycling and capacity building and sustenance of the agencies. More importantly, Federal government must ensure and display political will to support appropriate road safety legislation and stringent enforcement of law by which we all must abide.
Railway Transportation
The most important land base transportation mode for the movement of goods, services and passengers in large numbers; effectively and efficiently, is the rail mode. The rail, within the cities and across the regions, contributes significantly to economic development as well as socio-spatial interaction of people that enhances the development of the country. This is not the case in Nigeria. Apart from the fact that the rail remains the backbone of transport system of any nation, it is an environmentally attractive service, supporting the living and economic competitiveness of the people. It is a key contributor in urban mass transportation and reduces the stress on the road as well as land based mobility accidents. The Nigeria rail system is about 116 years old, built on a network of narrow gauge rail lines, totalling 3,505km.
The challenges of rail transportation remains the narrow gauge network characteristics that is full of curves, bends and sharp gradients, leading to its extremely slow rate of movement and long hourly rate of travel. The only functional line of Lagos to Kano still takes about 40 hours, all things being equal. It is important to note the unimpressive and extremely slow rehabilitation and modernization programmes of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) that involves upgrading of signalling and telecommunication system as well as construction of new standard gauge lines.
The most important strategic option for the development of rail transportation in Nigeria is a complete reform in the direction of fast tracking of the private sector participation in the sector by repealing the Nigeria Railway Act of 1955 and re-enacting the Nigeria Railway authority Act that is presently with the National Assembly. The second is open and transparent involvement of private sector partners through private partnership participation initiatives, particularly in the area of remodelling and redevelopment of major railway stations to modern commercial enterprises, and for supply and utilization of coaches and wagons, provision of warehousing and logistics. The PPP options must be in the following areas towards Nigeria modern rail development: freight services; passenger services; rolling stock investment and maintenance; investment in rail infrastructure; track maintenance and commercial development of rail way properties.
Inland Waterways Transport
Despite being the first mode of transport developed by the European explorers and subsequently the colonial masters, the Nigerian inland waterways remain the least developed and one of the untapped sectors of the Nigerian transport system.
The most significant strategic option for the development of inland waterways transport is to speed up the passage of the National Inland Waterways bill currently with the National Assembly, so as to open up public private initiatives, investment and participation. The dredging of the river Niger and Benue must be sustained for easy movement of commodities and other farm products to urban centres. In addition, the developed inland ports should be transferred to Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) for effective management and subsequent concessioning to private operators. Decentralize National Inland Waterways Authority to the state governments for effective ferry services in their respective jurisdiction to complement expected intermodal services of the state and also complement effective public transportation system in the cities.
Maritime Transport
The Nigerian maritime transport sector is a significant economic and employment generation basin of national development and its international trade harness. The seaports that serve as the gateway to the nation’s economy are entirely owned by the Nigerian Port Authority which strikingly provides over 95% of the ships that trade with Nigeria but are owned by foreigners. This implies that Nigerians only act as agents to these foreign concerns, despite incentives provided by the government to indigenous shipping companies.
Without doubt and going by several research findings, the services rendered by the concessionaires are obviously more efficient and the cost of doing business in our ports is relatively less expensive. However, the NPA as a landlord, also serves as a regulator while the concessioning programme is yet to be backed by any specific law.
The most important strategic option for reassessment and reappraisal of the nation’s maritime sector is to urgently fast track the Port Harbour bill currently at the National Assembly, which is to address the current limitations and delimitations of the roles and functions of the regulating responsibilities of the entire maritime sector.
Secondly, the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA), with the support of the government, should quickly dredge and deepen the port channels and the key aprons in order to attain capacities that can handle vessels so as to improve patronage of our seaports.
The agreement with the terminal concessionaires at our ports should be enforced to minimize corruption and improve the quality and efficiency of cargo handling services.
The ports should be serviced with rail infrastructure and linked by the same to the inland dry ports as part of the strategies to unbundle congestions at the ports. This is in addition to strengthening quick evacuation of cargo out of the ports and quick delivery into the ports.
NIMASA’s role, along with the Nigerian Navy, towards maintenance of security, coastal patrol, surveillance and protection of vessels, should be reassessed to minimize corruption and curtail duplication of duties.
Government should make regulations to discourage the transportation of large volume of containers by road from Lagos to the South East. Instead, such containers should first go to Warri, PH or Calabar for onward delivery to their destinations in the South or South East. This will immensely save the life span of the East West roads, at the same time reduce the cost of container movements from Lagos to the eastern axis of Nigeria.
Air And Aviation Transport
The Nigerian aviation industry contributes a paltry amount to the GDP, which normally should be far higher, compared to the nature of the sector in the development of the country. This is because the country’s aviation industry development is still dominated by foreign airlines that remit significant proportions of their earnings to their indigenous countries. Yet, the Federal government continuously pumped 100s of millions of dollars into renovation, remodelling, expansion of existing facilities and infrastructure in 20 airports across the country, without commensurate dimension and measure for hub development coming up to play a vital role. The huge expenditure has not and could not return the value of investment, simply because the business model being adopted in the country is not developed or designed to recoup any meaningful revenue from the airport remodelling projects. In addition, there are challenges of aging of existing infrastructure without any robust maintenance programme, inadequate equipment to meet very high international standard, inadequate security and safety programmes, and dearth of seasoned aviation professionals due to early retirement of the highly competent ones and persistent political intervention through the infusion of non-professionals who occupy high level offices in all aviation agencies owned by government.
Furthermore, the present trend of infrastructure upgrading must be sustained but modified to include public private partnership scheme that will minimize excessive public investment and encourage infusion of private investment. In addition, the federal agencies must be seen to work together and support FAAN and other relevant agencies towards improving international standards and the development of safety measures at the airport. Commercialization of hitherto public dominated businesses at the airports, must be pursued with a view to turning such enterprises into profit making commercial ventures without government subsidy.
Inter-Modal Transportation And Coordination
The challenges connecting the foregoing issues already highlighted are woven around complete absence of intermodal transport system within the country. In addition, there is little or no coordination among the various modes of transportation. The essence of developed inter-modality and effectively coordinated transport system is to ensure that transport modes complement one another, especially in strategic areas including our industrial zones and economic corridors, the airports well connected by the rail system to the main cities, connection of the Northeast and Northwest by rail, connection of the Southeast and Southwest by rail system and the effective use of the inland waterways from the Delta region to the North West and North Eastern part of Nigeria. This requires effective co-ordination through the instrumentality of national transport policy and state transport policy such that the state transport policy will take a general cue from that of general transport policy.
The Federal Ministry of Transport has a significant role to play in this regard but more importantly, the Ministry must be well staffed by professionally qualified transport personnel and logisticians.
In addition, it is imperative that institutional measures be introduced, especially through legislation, to allow the industry to be responsive to new technologies, such as those available under ITS, and others in intermodal system. This will provide better opportunity and competitiveness in global trade. This in turn will usher in co-operation and collaboration and ultimately, policies for private participation in development of logistics infrastructure such as Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT); Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT); Rehabilitate, Own and Transfer (ROT) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
Conclusion
Efficient, effective, convenient, safe, equitable and cost affordable transportation systems that are desirable for this country rest on well-articulated national transport policies, legally established Council for the Registration of Transport personnel, Logisticians and professionals in the sector and well-funded investment in infrastructure and services for the mobility of people, goods and services.
The development of the transport sector has a huge opportunity of providing employment for the teaming population of young Nigerians and also addressing logistics challenges of food and security in the country.
The transport sector also provides opportunities for equitable public private partnership for infrastructural development and to further boost internally generated revenue for both federal and state governments. However, it must be a sector that generally relies on professionals that are trained, knowledgeable about the principles, practices, and ethics of transferability and logistics of the profession. This is perhaps the road map for transport sector for the incoming Federal administration.