…as high fuel prices, spare parts cost challenge transport sector
A second wave of Yuletide/New Year travels has kicked off across Nigeria, three days after Christmas Day, with the onset of the dry season ensuring firmer conditions and faster progress on the nation’s network of largely poor roads.
Travel times are further enhanced by the recent conclusion of repair work on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and the opening of the Second Niger Bridge, which links Asaba in Delta State to Onitsha in Anambra State.
The points of repair on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway previously took between one and three hours to navigate, while two years ago, travellers caught up in the gridlock at the foot of the old Niger Bridge frequently had to pass the night in the jam. This is no longer so.
Furthermore, the dispensation of cash from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) across the country has improved slightly in the past 10 days but this has been mostly in busy areas of the nation’s big cities.
Spurred on by the halting performance of the machines, teeming Point of Sale (PoS) machine operators across the country dispense cash to the public charging between N200 and N300 or more per N5,000 dispensed.
When our reporter visited the Murtala Muhammed International Airport Road at about 10 o’clock Thursday morning, the ATMs of nine banks were working and dispensing cash in tranches of N10,000. They included Polaris Bank, Eco Bank, FCMB, GTB, Keystone Bank, Globus Bank, Sterling Bank and UBA. The First Bank ATMs on that road were, however, not dispensing.
The fuel supply situation this Yuletide season has also shown a marked improvement from last year which witnessed acute shortages, bootlegging of petrol and astronomical price hikes in the black market following the drying up of supply from filling stations.
The gains of the relatively stable fuel supplies this year have, however, been cancelled out by official increases in petrol prices in May from the range of N160 to N650 per litre, following the removal of petrol subsidy and the free float of the local currency, the naira, by President Bola Tinubu on his inauguration into office on 29 May 2023.
Hit by the impact of the cash crunch on fuel and spare parts prices, transporters are seeking additional streams of income. This they do by taking on and billing for increased loads of unaccompanied baggage.
The baggage consist mostly of fashion ware, including clothes, shoes, cosmetics, wigs, pharmaceuticals and more, in tightly packed bags and cartons, for onward conveyance to markets upcountry.
Such baggage is squeezed into passenger leg space and other areas, causing great discomfort and forcing passengers to buy seats for minors, who ordinarily would have sat free of charge on their parents’ laps or in spare room in the cabin, now taken up by unaccompanied baggage.
As at 10 am on Thursday, the average cost of a seat on a 16-seater air-conditioned bus from Lagos to Benin was N39,000 while trips to Enugu and Port Harcourt from the same destination were N40,000 and N41,000, respectively.
The cost for the same facility this time last year was about N24,000.
The fares this year are about N5,000 less for buses without air-conditioning. Our reporter made visits to Libra Motors, God Is Good Motors, Peace Mass Transit Motors and Iyare Motors, all on mainland Lagos, among others.
Non air-conditioned buses in the high density areas of Mile-Two, Mazamaza, Oshodi and Ikotun in Lagos State charged between N25,000 and N30,000 for trips to Benin and Asaba. They then tended to further knock down prices by about 10 percent as from mid-day when patronage began to dwindle.
So far, police checkpoints positioned at about 3-kilometre intervals have established a high level of security on many travel routes, especially on the Lagos-Benin-Asaba-Onitsha route and others.
