FMOT MUST BEGIN TO PLAY ITS ROLE AS A REGULATORY AUTHORITY – ENGR GBENGA DAIRO

The Chairman of the Nigeria Transportation Commissioners Forum (NTCF) and Commissioner of Transportation in Ogun State, Engr Gbenga Dairo, said the challenges besetting transportation might continue if the Federal Government does not accord it the needed priority.“. He harped on professionalising the sector during an engaging conversation with Transportation Agenda Magazine‘s editorial team, comprising Managing Editor Michael Peters and Executive Director Abike Awojobi.”  Passionate and blunt, Engr. Dairo‘s  critique of the sector revealed a deep frustration with the continued administrative gaps and a call for urgent, coordinated action to reposition transportation as a critical pillar of national development.

As Chairman of the Nigeria Transportation Commissioners Forum (NTCF) and Ogun State Commissioner for Transportation, Engr. Gbenga Dairo’s opening remarks noted that over 90 percent of movements in the country are still dependent on the road transport mode. “If you look at the transport system in Nigeria, made up of the road, railway, aviation and inland waterways, you’ll agree that the vast majority of our movements are still largely processed by the land mode. The state of our roads I’m afraid is nothing to write home about. Also the utility of the infrastructure to serve the needs of the people who wish to move from one place to the other, in a safe, affordable and accessible manner is still very poor and incompatible to 21st century.”

“Our infrastructure across the country are not only poor, also the size of the road, the degree to which traffic regulations are complied with, and the length and breadth of the country are still low.” These he said had led to avoidable accidents, involving unsuitable and non-roadworthy trucks and trailers. “This, frankly, is unacceptable. By now we should have a wider network of roads across the length and breadth of the country, especially as we have local engineers who know the integrity of our road construction. It is a bit disappointing that in spite of our technical competence, we are where we are today. The road network itself is dominated up and down by private sector operators. The degree of regulation especially in our urban centres leaves much to be desired and there is need for change. So far I’ve been talking of passengers and private vehicle users on our roads, but if you ask all those who are into haulage and logistics business, their experiences are extraordinarily disappointing. The tax system is extortionist. Those who are operating trucks are subjected to various forms of taxes which are added to the cost of goods, products and services. These issues are very germane to the roads.”

“For our rail network, the one we still have is our colonial heritage as far back as over 127 years old. In recent times there has been efforts to try and modernize the railway system and as far as am concerned this has been very limited compared with the needs of that system or mode that is there in Nigeria today. Most countries the size of Nigeria are running railways. It takes immediate pressure off the road network either in terms of passenger or cargo movement. It is a shame that we haven’t done so well in Nigeria as our road network still moves about 90 percent of our travel needs across the country. Railway as we presently do it is very expensive, more especially there is competing demands for scarce resources from the government. Here in Ogun State we have rail lines but unfortunately it is not connected with the rest of our transport system as we would like it. We are however discussing with the Nigerian Railway Corporation and soon, the result of our collaboration will start manifesting.”

“The aviation system or mode is one that could be better than the way it is. With my experience from other jurisdictions, we have seen how aviation is managed and conducted in other countries. If I can just pause a bit, for those of us in the transport sector, the first thing we identify are the stakeholders in transportation and the role of government in transportation. The role of government is purely facilitation. To create an environment where people and business can thrive safely and at an affordable price. The stakeholders are usually – passengers, professional bodies, media, investors, owners, operators, all these are stakeholders, but the most important stakeholder is the passenger and the passenger is the people of the country, they are the one who uses all the systems. Governments are merely to facilitate and to ensure that the first stakeholder gets the best, safe, efficient, affordable and secure services across all modes. As a passenger their experiences across all modes remains very frustrating. At times flights are cancelled without any notice, the quality of service is poor, the experience at the airport leaves a lot to be desired. These are areas that we think we feel we need to get more services than presently delivered. The connections with local flights are extremely cumbersome. Everything around the Nigerian transportation system is challenging, yet we have the manpower and the skill and know how to do these things but sometimes these things don’t happen. If you know the waterway, boat accidents are on a regular and high frequency with huge fatalities. In Nigeria, accidents are seen as normal incidents and people just move on and nothing happens. In other jurisdictions, what drives change in transportation is the death of an individual. When accidents happen, they always say to themselves this must not happen again. Here, we blame it on divine happenings and no one takes responsibility for what happens. As a Commissioner of Transportation, I know I have a personal responsibility on these issues. But my view is usually that every stakeholder in the industry – Government, the passenger, the media, private operators, academia, industry operators, must all determine that this is the goal. That is why I mentioned that there is a part for everyone to play. The goal at all times is to safeguard the wellbeing of our number one stakeholder in the transportation system which is the passenger and those who are operating in the services to service industries, which are logistics.

Today, what we have are a preponderance of private operators, you have commercial okada operators, something that in 2025 should not be used in carrying people around, but we are promoting them and now that it has become a source of employment for people, dealing with them has become more challenging. But I think, even if we accept the reality that it has become a source of livelihoods, we should be able to regulate them in such a way that it would be conducted in a decent and safe atmosphere.”

Responding to the peculiar challenges he faced in achieving mandates in Ogun State, Engr. Dairo said his number one challenge remains cash but admitted that they are now very much into detailed planning, ditto maintenance of existing infrastructure. “We are fortunate in Ogun State that the governor is inclined for detailed planning. We are not addressing all roads at the same time because we lacked the resources. We decided to prioritise our intervention. The second challenge is the dearth of available capacity. We don’t have professionals who know what to do regarding implementation of policies. That is where I have issues with academia. The quality of their products keep getting poorer. The other challenge we face is that of coordination. People love to work in silos a lot, whereas the game of transport is one that involves several layers of cooperation and collaboration even when you extend your arms to many of them, they are reluctant to join you. You want to build a road for example, as at today, the Ministry responsible across the country is the Ministry of Works. In other jurisdictions in the US, UK, where we see the success of the transport system all these providers realise and work under the umbrella of the transportation leadership. They have the vision, they have the plan and they know all those who are to contribute to it for the system to work. The government are important, operators are important, the enforcement team is important, the regulators are important, there are various important actors in the transportation system and the transport team at the head should be the one coordinating and integrating all other imputs. I know that former President Olusegun Obasanjo tried it but it collapsed spectacularly maybe for political reasons, because then you have the transport Ministry and under them was aviation and works and waterways.” “That’s actually the way it could work. Somebody must be the custodian of the transport policy and the transport plan and that ought to be the Federal Ministry of Transportation. The FMOT at federal level and the state ministry of transportation at the state level. Since we came on board, we have been working to see that the local governments create a transport unit in the local governments, so that they too will control transportation including road repairs, etc within their jurisdiction. As a transport expert, for me that is the way it should be. That is another challenge. I’ve been involved in transportation now for 40 years and the formula I used is to look at the four pillars – Infrastructure, Operations, Institutional and regulatory arrangements and funding, and these four affect every mode that we are concerned with. Financing railways for instance is very expensive and it requires collaboration with our physical Planning people, Environment, everybody coming together to play their part. Now that the Nigerian Railway Corporation is being revitalized maybe they should be driving that process. By the way, some of us believed that the Nigerian Railway Corporation was overdue for an overhaul. Today NRC is essentially an operating company. A train operating company with a property arm. But what we really need is a railway planning and development authority. It is not a railway infrastructure provider either, all they do is operate the rolling stocks. As a country, we need a higher level agency or institution that should regulate the four pillars namely – infrastructure operation, regulatory and funding. Maybe the person who should do this is the Minister of Transportation using the platform of the Ministry and until he begins to perform his role, we might just be working in cycles.”

On any reform he would love to see in the sub-sector?Engr. Dairo said he looks forward to seeing a Federal Agency for Road Transportation. He would also want to see that it is professionalised, That’s the starting point, he insisted, adding, the officials at the federal level must have the professional capacity to advise the minister, so the minister can advise the Federal Executive Council and can advise the President.”I am very concerned about that. The transport system is too critical to be left to just anyone. Again, we must change the way we finance our projects. We have about three or four models that we can consider – there is the western model of financing and financial planning, there is the Gulf/Dubai Model, there is the Chinese model of financing and perhaps the African model. In the western world, if they want to build a route the first question they ask is how is the best way to do it? By road, by rail, by air, by water or a combination of all these modes. That is their first level of thinking. But they are so advanced because already, between A and B are multiple routes, they are not starting from ground zero. That is why to have another mode in place they put it through thorough examination and interrogation. Here in Nigeria, between A and B are empty spaces. And we are always quick to adopt a western model of financing and evaluation. It is clear that we cannot adopt a western model to connect A to B in our country because no alternatives are there for the people. I am glad about the model adopted by the presidency in building the coastal road. For example, I am glad that Mr. President decided to embark on it without asking the so-called experts for their opinions. The other approach is what we called the Dubai Approach. Which suggests that once you clearly identified your needs, you go all out to get it done without inviting multi-level experts to come and help you analyse why it should be provided. The Dubai approach suggests that we have the money and in our needs priorities we have zeroed down on a project that must be done and we set at doing it. The Chinese which I am hoping we will put some attention to is about national development. The number one focus is to answer the basic question: how does the project develop our people and our nation and how can we make sure we do it ourselves? We must own the project from scratch to finish by ourselves. Someday, I hope we will get there.”

On his thoughts on where Ogun State is on the issue of multimodal and intermodal systems, Dairo  said the state is more into providing multimodal systems to take her people from one point to the other.

“In Ogun State we have a strategic transportation master plan. We have a multi-modal master plan for Ogun State which was put together when this administration came on board and that plan is what is directing our intervention in the various routes across the state. Since it is a multi-modal plan, it is not exactly an inter-modal plan because there is a subtle difference between intermodal and multimodal. Right now we are simply creating options for people to move from one location to another and not everywhere across the state. We are not there yet. But we know that there is every reason for people to move from Ogun State and back, because of the connection between Ogun and Lagos. We know there is a need for people to get to our airport, which we are developing, we need a good network of alternatives because we are developing an important agro processing zone. We are developing a deep sea at Olokola, the issue before us is to see that we can get to that sea port and that the goods that arrives there can be moved within and out of the state with ease.We know that in our town centres there is the need to move around reasonably to connect safely with the markets, and affordably around Abeokuta, Ijebu-Ode, Sagamu, Ilaro, Otta, and Imeko-Afon. These big towns more or less are acknowledged business districts and other economic cluster areas across the state. These plans speak to those in a way that is multimodal in its conceptualisation. The intermodal we are doing are specific, for example we are doing an intermodal in our dry port at Kajola to serve the industry growing in the Ogun State area who are dependent on imported raw materials and for ways to export these products outside. So by putting a dry port at Kajola, we are looking at getting goods from Apapa sea port by rail to be channeled by road to other parts of Ogun State. That is more intermodal in character.”

Engr. Dairo sheds more light on the question of why several states are yet to prioritise transportation. As the chairman of the Nigeria Transport Commissioners Forum, NTCF,  Engr. Dairo said since transportation is a derived responsibility, it behooves on each state to determine the way it wants to organise its traffic management system. “You must admit that as a country, the needs of states differ one to the other. Ogun is different from Lagos and Lagos is different from Zamfara State. There are one or two states that are similar, generally speaking but by and large every state has its own character, needs requirements and priorities and that determines the leadership of the states that address the various issues that arise in their various jurisdictions. We must also remember that the states are led by politicians and politicians generally tend to reflect the needs and priorities of their people. The second point to note is that although we have been moving around in one form or the other, I should say that transportation is relatively unknown despite the pretensions by many that they know it in Nigeria. That is a major challenge we have because people think that they have an idea of the intricacies of transportation and its critical importance to the livelihood of people and indeed economic prosperity of the country. Those are two of the reasons why it would seem transportation has taken a back seat in many states. We are fortunate now that we have NTCF and we have performing states like Lagos and Abuja. People are now seeing that transportation can be taken to another level. One would have preferred the Federal Ministry of Transportation to be the champion of this change. Take for example what happens in the UK and US. In the UK you have the Department of Transport, in the US, you have a Federal Transport Authority. FTA is like our FMOT here and all the states in the US are also independent in their own right with their commissioners of transportation. The Federal Transportation Authority in America understands that there must be unification of standards across all the states irrespective of where you find yourself. You must be able to see that basic transportation requirements are consistent and not at variance with each other. The width of the roads, the interchanges, the same traffic lighting system etc. are in use across the states. That’s the role the FTA plays in America to ensure that they set the standards and they incentivise all the states in America to comply with those standards and to improve their transport systems for the economic wellbeing for the entirety of the country. They realised that there are some rural states, there are mining states, and there are urban city states and this means that the needs of each state are different. The FTA puts together a transportation plan which is funded by the FTA and every budget year the FTA sets their own priorities. That is the way Nigeria too is. For it to work, each state’s Ministry of Transportation must be professionalised to be able to generate what their needs and requirements are to be able to generate convincing programmes that could be funded either by the state or jointly by the state and the FTA. “Just to ensure that transport is not just an all comers sector. It is a sector that requires that professionals must be able to compete for funds in your state to be able to derive funds for your projects. NTCF could achieve more than it has, but I know that from my own perspective, there is intention, and the realities of the political cycle and a whole lot of other things are impeding. However, right now, we have the Urban Mobility Development Agenda, which we are working with the federal government and the World Bank to put in place. If we establish that and get the Federal Ministry of Transportation to assume the role of FTA, they are the one that would incentivise every one of us depending on what we are able to do. That despite our challenges, politics and other distractions, we should focus our minds where results are targeted. To get the FMOT to take up its role and get the World Bank to finance some critical legs of our programme. One of the advantages of such is that the states would be able to generate all that we need because we are conscious that our needs and priorities are different. Unfortunately this process is slowed down by bureaucracy.”