Residents of the Nigerian capital, Abuja, daily grapple with the challenges of an organised transportation system. This has left a gaping loophole for informal entrants into the sector occasionally resulting in criminal attacks on commuters, writes BEN ADOGA in Abuja.
Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was planned to be a serene city comparable to any modern city in the world. That could not have been attained, especially in the transportation sector.
But in the FCT today, it is sad, to say the least, that transportation as a system is chaotic. It is no joy to say that the network has since broken down as no formal system exists at the moment. With the 2022 population figure of the city put at 3,652,029, as against the 2020 figure of 3,277,740 and 2021 population estimate which stood at 3,464,123, the FCT is growing steadily, but grappling with the challenges of free and convenient movement of goods and persons.
In 2023, the population of the FCT is expected to grow by 3,839,646, and there is no clear solution as to how the deficit can best be managed.
Nature indeed abhors a vacuum. The dearth of any organised transportation system has given rise to touting at different parts of the FCT, including the city centre.
Illegal motor parks have sprouted on roads and streets. This is largely responsible for traffic gridlock on major road corridors across the city.
On the Abuja–Keffi gateway, apart from other factors, around the popular El-Rufai Park, what happens every morning when workers are jostling and scrambling to get to work is not dignifying.
It is shameful to see Nigerian workers scramble to get to workplaces getting stranded every evening, and trying to get home. Touts rule with aggressive lawlessness, and the prevailing scenario is not befitting for a modern capital like Abuja.
The situation from the Kaduna Abuja entry point is equally as chaotic as it is in the Airport Road axis which is the gateway from Lagos and Kogi states.
Even the dualised Kubwa Expressway has not been able to help the situation as the volume of traffic on that axis has become nauseating because of indiscriminate parking and makeshift bus stops on the road allow for chaos and resultant gridlock and attendant petty crimes.
Fears, intrigues trail APC convention
On the Abuja–Keffi axis, there are several spots where motorists contend with touts, road constriction, heavy human presence, and other encumbrances as found at Nyanya terminal, Kugbo Mechanic, Kugbo Furniture area, Mogadishu Cantonment, and the AYA Bridge.
In the city centre, there are embarrassing spots where passengers gather in unauthorised locations, scampering for transportation, making October 20, 2019, a mockery of the modern city that Abuja is supposed to be.
The FCT, originally designed to accommodate one million residents, today harbours approximately 3.7 million residents. This goes without saying that all public facilities in the FCT are overstretched, and without an official transportation system that works. That, simply, is not the way to run a modern city that should have been a model for others to copy.
The purpose of moving the ever-increasing population of the city around definitely created the idea of a mass transit system. The Abuja Bus Services (ABS) was introduced to take care of that need in 1984.
On October 20, 2019, 290 high capacity vehicles, which later became popularly known as ‘el-Rufai buses’, were introduced to shuttle between the satellite towns and city centre, and later Abuja Leasing Company Ltd, to take care of elite passengers within the city, especially to the airport. Later, a comfortable taxi hiring system was added to the mass transit scheme.
Today, all that is history; everything has been run aground. Along Kubwa Expressway, innumerable numbers of cannibalised buses are parked there. The few healthy ones have been converted into FCT Workers Welfare Scheme buses that convey workers to satellite towns. These, however, are very few in number and all other commuters are left to their fate.
Private vehicle owners have since taken advantage of the situation to put their vehicles on the road to and from work, to make ends meet.
Popularly called ‘Kabu kabu,’ Nigerian parlance, cabs have filled the void left by the disorganised transportation system. But they can hardly be regulated and do not contribute to the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), just as criminality cannot be checked with these unidentifiable transporters.
Recently, the Transportation Secretariat issued a statement signed by the deputy director and public relations officer (PRO), Ifeanyi Ughammadu, warning all illegal operators to desist from further operations.
In the bid to address the crowd and touting in the city, as well as causing traffic hold-ups, the secretariat drew the red line in the meeting with the stakeholders.
Ughammadu said, after a meeting with critical stakeholders including transport unions and the then-acting secretary that the secretariat would not hesitate to invoke sanctions as contained in the provisional operational licence.
The secretary directed that all unions and individuals engaging touts should withdraw them from the roads. But, meanwhile, the unregulated transportation system in the nation’s capital has given rise to criminal elements who attack commuters that patronize them. Often, there have been cases of robberies and attacks on passengers reported to the police. Although there are transport unions, they have been unable to check the cases of incessant attacks.
This development informed the decision of the secretariat to warn against hooliganism in the guise of unionism, while also putting its feet down on operators of unpainted taxis to clear the roads as they had not been licensed to operate within the city.
Recently appointed Mandate Secretary, Zakari Angulu Dobi, has embarked on a familiarisation tour and held meetings with various stakeholders before the eventual take-off of the committee.
