…as travelers mill at motor parks
As the New Year inches near, teeming Nigerians travelling by road across the country on Christmas/New Year holidays are contending with transport fare hikes of upwards of 70% percent in many cases.
This follows on a rush of travelers and surges in the cost of fuel and similar hikes in the prices of vehicle spare parts, driven by inflationary trends.
The fare hikes are further informed by traffic jams, long turn-around times and a shortage of passengers on the return legs of most trips.
John Obiora, a transporter operating out of the Ojota motor park in Lagos, says, “The cost of vehicles has gone up because of the price of the dollar. The cost of spare parts has gone up too. There is ‘go slow’ on the roads and when you are coming back to Lagos there are no passengers. We have to charge for this, if not we will lose in business. After New Year things will come down again”.
At the Libra Motors terminal in Okota, Lagos, on Tuesday December 27, charges per seat for 14-seater commercial air conditioned buses were listed as N26,000 to Owerri, the Imo State capital, N25,000 to Onitsha; N25,000 to Asaba and N21,000 to Benin. The prices were in the same range at motor parks in Ojota, Jibowu, Mile-Two, Agboju and Ikotun areas, among others.
Road transport fares from Lagos to Makurdi were in the range of N18, 000 for 14-seater buses without air conditioning.
Fifty-seater buses without air conditioning, operating from Lagos to Kano and Kaduna charged N27,000.
The prices for the same destinations by the same means, were at least 70% lower than the current rates as at ten days ago.
Fuel prices began to rise across the country about ten weeks ago, when shortages suddenly emerged, attended by long queues at filling stations.
Soon after, some filling stations began to sell petrol for as much as N230 per litre, as against the approved price of N170 per litre. Meanwhile, the outlets of major marketers such as the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) continued to sell at the official rates of N170 per litre and witness especially long and tedious queues.
This sustained discrepancy in fuel prices caused some market watchers to speculate a removal of government subsidy on petroleum products which would leave the price of fuel to be determined by market forces but this has so far not happened.
