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Moses Akaigwe
Isaac I. Uhunmwagho, an engineer, founder and Chairman of Efosa Express and EFEX Executive, is one of the country’s most experienced road transporters having entered the business with a taxi in 1975, in Benin.
Recently, at a well attended maiden annual general meeting in Lagos, Uhunmwagho was elected the President of a new and all-inclusive coalition of road transport bodies – Public Transport Owners of Nigeria Association. PTONA came into existence when the Association of Luxury Bus Owners of Nigeria (ALBON); Association of Mass Transit Operators of Nigeria (AMTO); and Association of Benin Transport Owners (ABTO}; and other transport owners, coalesced with the aim of uplifting the industry to play a major role in the economy of the country.
In his first post inauguration interview, the PTONA President gives an insight into theobjectives of the new association, the need to ensure standardization in order to improve travelers’ experience and identified some of the challenges clogging road transpiration.
“For example, the road network between Lagos and Abuja is very poor and it affects the economy seriously. When government and associations like ours work together, those areas that should get greater attention will be jointly identified for the government to take action.”
Here is full transcript of the interview:
An engineer in transportation
Engineers have lots of advantages in running transport business. This is because an engineer is within his ecosystem in transportation, hence the other major personnel like drivers and mechanics, cannot take an engineer for a ride; whereas, they can easily take other non-technical owners for a spin. This is one of the many advantages of an engineer in transportation business. As for myself, I knew I was going to be a transporter even before I became an engineer. It was when I was in secondary school, in the early 1960s, that I identified transportation as a business area of interest. I was essentially a mathematician in school, and I casually carried out a simple profitability analysis on the common Morris Minor town-service taxi-cab in Benin City. The result was amazingly positive. As a matter of, fact, if I had chosen to drop out of school then, and gone straight into transportation, I would have had a much bigger transport business. It took me another 13 years, after completing my secondary, technical college, and B.Sc degree in Mechanical Engineering, in the UK, and an extremely lucrative job with one of the biggest multi-nationals in Nigeria, to practicalise my experiment in transportation.
Just one year after being employed as an engineer with the multi-national company, I bought my first vehicle as a transport operator. One vehicle begot two, two begot three and just like that, the business grew. Mind you, I said I had a very lucrative job. Therefore, I constantly injected over 75 percent of my total income into the business as well. Many of the major transport owners are not from the background of drivers, agberos, and the like. In fact, that is one of the misconceptions about transportation in this country. Some of us came into transportation to operate professionally, and bring about major positive changes to transportation.
As for Efosa and Efex, we started with one taxi cab in Benin City, which was my base then. From taxis, we moved into purchasing danfo buses which we called the tuketuke in 1978- 1979. All these were town services within Benin City. It was in 1981, after we had had probably 30 town service vehicles which were becoming unwieldy to manage, that we moved to higher capacity 30-seater Coaster buses for inter-state services operating between Benin City and Lagos.
Shift from luxury to mini buses
At the time we had those big players in the industry, the number of people who were in transportation were much fewer. But those big bus owners were the core transporters, and they went into transportation with huge investments. At that time, they had maybe 70 or 80 percent of the market to themselves; the remaining 20 percent was shared by smaller operators. But as the market opened up, it was not easy for many of the smaller operators to go in with huge investments. The hundreds of transporters operating with two to five inter-state vehicles could be described as micro transporters.
Another major reason for the increased use of mini buses in comparison with big buses and coaches is because of the deterioration of roads. In fact, there was a time, about 14 years ago, when even the Benin-Sagamu-Lagos road failed totally. One could spend two days on the road because of the failed portions of the road.
In addition to that, there are so many heavy duty vehicles (trucks, trailers, tankers and lorries) that are mainly responsible for the destruction of the roads. The traffic volume today is probably 100 times heavier than what it was 35 to 40 years ago. When the roads started crumbling and failing, some of the major highways became impassable, especially for big vehicles. The smaller vehicles were able to manoeuvre because they are more adaptable to going through some bush-paths turned into roads that motorists had to resort to at times. The luxury buses could not follow those smaller roads and make shift bridges. Many major transport companies had to become flexible and mix up their fleet with some mini buses. It was for their survival. It has even degenerated below that recently.
Formation of PTONA
PTONA {Public Transport Owners of Nigeria Association} is a product of necessity. It is an association that is very late in coming into existence. It is probably five decades late. This is because you observe that the transport sector is a massive segment of the economy. Apart from the economic aspect, it is a major responsibility of governments of all nations worldwide to ensure safe, secured and conducive modes of transportation to its citizens. Please, note that I did not say free transportation to citizens. Our government has always been aware of this huge responsibility; this is why construction and repair of roads ranks among the top three budget expenditures for federal and state governments every year. It is because of these facts, that I personally have a lot of sympathy and understanding for the predicament of government. Apart from the power sector, they allocate colossal amounts of money o road works. Despite the best effort of government, the average Nigerian is full of condemnation to the government for not fixing roads in Nigeria, not minding the colossal budgets on roads. Even the foreign loans being canvassed recently are for roads and transportation infrastructure. There is a missing link. That is where PTONA and government can brainstorm and collaborate to resolve the real causes and arrive at solutions to our transportation problems.
In many of the developed economies, railways and water transportation are highly developed and they handle the majority of transportation of goods, industrial materials, heavy loads, and non-human traffic. In addition, most of the long distance travelling is done through the rail system. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, 90 percent of all forms of transportation is by road for humans, goods, and everything under the sun. We in PTONA are involved in the transportation of our citizens, and that is supposed to be the most important area for government by far. Passenger transportation is most important, because the safety of people is paramount, not just to transport owners, but definitely to the government as well. Therefore, PTONA has come in rightfully to gather all the public transport owners to work as one team, harmonise with the government (at the federal, state and local levels) on strategic ways to improve significantly many aspects of public transportation.
Before PTONA, all our members were primarily interested in the survival of their respective businesses and many of us have run our businesses for several decades. We have seen some sunny days as well as dark days in this industry. With the advent of PTONA and cooperation with the government and its agencies, we shall have a better vision to pursue higher goals of operations for the good of our constituency, which is the travelling public. Before now, a traveller in Nigeria could get various degrees of customer service depending on the transport company he or she chooses to patronise. All the transport companies essentially set up their own standards. But with PTONA in place, we can start talking about standardisation and we can start discussing with government and agreeing on what an average Nigerian citizen should get when he wants to travel. On special routes like Lagos to Abuja, a reasonable travel time can be targeted in terms of safety and security as well as a fairly well maintained and monitored condition of the road.
Public transport owners have the interest of the travelling public in mind because of the well established customer relationship which they have learned to practice over the years, and the desires of a road traveler are well within the knowledge and capacity of a successful transport owner. Most transport owners are customer-focused, because they have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly on the roads. One can, therefore, envision the synergy that can be derived when over one hundred major transporters decide to collaborate with government and its agencies for the improvement of transportation in Nigeria.
Most people are aware that road transport business is one of the worst businesses anyone can venture into. Most transport owners, whenever they have any problems, have always been on their own, in confronting the myriad of challenges they face in the business. You can be here in Lagos, and you receive a call that something has happened to your vehicle in Plateau state. But, with an association like PTONA, there will be a lot of cooperation and team work so that what affects one, affects all and every company will no longer be standing alone and fighting alone.
Challenges
There are numerous challenges, as you can well imagine. Some are from external bodies while others have been as a result of the fact that we did not deem it fit before now to collectively address some issues. The most pertinent ones are as a result of our failure to engage with the government constructively before now. It is better late than never; hence, the necessity to begin now. Some of the challenges are as a result of the lack of internal and external communication – internal being communication among fellow road transport operators and external being communication between the transport operators and the government.
The manifestations of the above problems are the visible scars, aches and pains that many transport owners have been experiencing. They include numerous operational problems such as unhealthy competition in the transport services; multiple taxations from various tiers of government; lack of concessions to transporters towards alleviating high transportation fares; high import duties on commercial buses; insecurity on the highways; and harassment by various agencies, among others.
The challenges are many and the country is vast. The agencies that are involved in road transportation are numerous. It is our intention to dialogue with most of them so that we start understanding ourselves.
We intend to reach out to most of these agencies because we are legally established companies rendering very honest and legitimate services to the economy and citizens of our great country. A lot can be achieved by talking to each other. We intend to open channels of communications with various bodies. Simple communication and understanding of our respective roles will go a long way in resolving conflicts in the transport value chain.
Tackling road infrastructure problems
It is a fact that transportation is an inevitable aspect of human existence in today’s world, and it must be equally recognised that government is doing almost all they can with limited resources to construct roads. The question, therefore, is: Why do we still have such a huge deficit in the availability of motorable roads?
In fact, it is a function of the management of the entire system. It is the inter-play between our roads and the usage of the roads. Unfortunately, in this part of the world, our people believe that government exists to provide virtually everything like roads, water, electricity, schools to its citizens. In reality, in most countries, including developed countries, the citizens have to pay for most of these amenities, including the roads.
For example, we have vehicle licences, which are supposed to be some element of payment or taxation to enable citizens use the roads and also regulate such usage. The amount one pays for vehicle licence probably does not go anywhere near what is required for road construction and maintenance. It is for this reason that tolls are paid on major roads in various countries. This has been found to be a direct way to ensure that money is taken from those who are actually using the roads. In many countries, the rates of the tolls vary according to the weight and size of the vehicles that are going through them. Government needs to establish a more transparent and efficient system of collecting and managing tolls from road users.
Major stakeholders such as PTONA, will work as partners with the government in ensuring that when tolls are re-introduced in Nigeria, the funds generated will not be for the enrichment of contractors and friends of powerful politicians. The entire country has shed blood, sweat and tears as a result of bad roads, and in many cases mismanagement of funds, otherwise called lack of accountability. It is an assumption that the huge budgets for road construction and maintenance are judiciously utilised. We have learnt a lot from the power sector where billions of dollars were always budgeted and the citizens got more darkness rather than electricity. We can never fully quantify the amount of losses that this country has suffered as a result of bad roads…
For example, the road network between Lagos and Abuja is very deplorable, and it affects the economy seriously. When the government and associations like ours work together within a permanent collaborative setting, those areas that should get greater attention and priority will be jointly identified for the government to take action.
Insurance cover for travellers
Most transport owners, as much as possible, would want a situation where there is an insurance cover for the travelling public. After all, even goods moving from one location to the other have goods-in-transit insurance covers. In an ideal situation, there should be insurance covers for all travellers. Some transport operators have schemes with insurance companies, but with PTONA, we will be in a better position to appraise what various insurance companies have to offer, and the ones that are most suitable and beneficial to the travelers. PTONA will work with the government to regulate insurance covers and policies for travellers, as well as ensuring that the policies are not fixed at ridiculously high rates as this may discourage passengers and transport operators from taking up these insurance policies.
