… says Nigeria still running stone age Transport System
Transport Expert, Dr. Segun Musa, has fingered lack of policy drive and political compensation as bane to a sustainable transport system in Nigeria.
Musa was speaking in an exclusive interview with ‘Justnet News’ stressing that there must be a regulation that will align Nigeria’s transport system with international best practices for it to achieve a sustainable transport system.
He frowned at situations where key appointments in the transport sector are made based on political compensation, adding that our transport system is still in Stone Age, lacking intermodal system and impact assessments.
“We can only have a sustainable transport system in Nigeria if we have a policy drive. There must be a regulation that will align our transport system with international best practices. And that can only be achieved if we have a policy drive that we can always continue appraising performance and also improving and aligning to regular change.
“Presently, what we run in Nigeria, we call it ‘Stone Age’ Transport System, where every mode operates independently without complimenting one other. And there’s no way you achieve the best of results when you have the mode of transportation operating independently without complimenting one other in a symbiotic way. So for us to have a sustainable system in place, we must be able to define what we stand to benefit from each of the modes of transportation.
“And we must be able to define how best they can compliment one other and how best they can integrate the movement of traffic. As we speak, we don’t have a policy drive in place that can actually propel international standard transport system or holistic transport system. What we have is independent litmus test where every actor, be it the minister, the managing directors, the general manager or secretary of agencies, ministry and parastatals, will just come up with an idea, probably gotten from a journal or anything, and he will start implementing.
“And nobody tried to do what we call impact assessments. And that’s why we’re where we are today because some of those policies are contributing to the collapse of the transport system in Nigeria. Until we begin to look at what is the trend that is advancing transport system to be able to drive economy in developing countries, then that is where we begin to have a sustainability that can actually support the government policy in revamping the economy.
“Because when you look at transport; transport is the starting point of every economy, it is the motive force behind every economy. If we don’t have effective transport system in place, definitely there’s no way you can drive your economy.
“Transport system is just like the blood in our body. If there’s any stoppage anywhere, you will realise that, that place will not be functional. And that’s why we are having a lot of challenges when it comes to economy development in Nigeria because most of the economic policies did not align with the kind of transport system we are operating.”
Musa who is also the Managing Director of Widescope Limited and Publisher, Global Transport Policy, averred that the government needs to integrate a workable policy into the economic policy so as to be able to drive the economy effectively. “In a situation where you don’t have effective transport system, the economy will not taxi, talk less of flying.
“You only have the economy policy, but nothing to move it beyond where it is. And that’s why you continue seeing government policy on the economy being repeated annually. Government will tell you that today; we want to make sure we put effort to boost our economy through agriculture.
“We want to build our economy through production. But you realise that it is what is going to be repeated in the next year when they are reading the next budget. Because the last one they did, did not taxi, talk less of flying.