Nigeria has not tapped 9% of transport potentials – Dr. Taiwo Salaam

‘Without a Transport policy, investors will not take you serious as a country’

By Lanre Abdul

Dr. Taiwo Salaam is a transport expert of repute. A former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transportation in Lagos who was part and parcel of the transportation policy in the state is also the state chairman of the Chartered Institute of Transport Administration of Nigeria (CIOTA). In this interview, he took our Reporter down the memory lane to justify the strategic importance of a policy to drive the transportation sector of Nigeria. He decries the delay in the ratification of Nigeria’s National Transport Policy.

Excerpt!

What is the imperative of having a transport policy?

If you look at it, transport is what all human beings need. Unfortunately, sudden transport is a problem for people. Why do I mean it’s a problem to people? Because there’s what we call transport psychology, a lot of people want to do it in their own way, whereas transports are standard. So, to study it becomes a problem to some. That’s one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is that if they make laws, they know that most of them contravene the law, so they don’t want the law to be made. That is one of the problems we have.

Now, when we talk of policy, policy is what you want to do, when you want to do it and how you do that. How do you want it done? Those are the three things you need in policy. You need roads. Where do we need these roads? Why do we need this road? And what is the effort we are making to bring these roads? Can we do it by ourselves?

You have to look at your pockets. Can we bring in PPP to come and do it? Can we do half of it as a government and then the private sector should do half of it? Can we borrow money to do it? These are the things you need to look at. So, you have to look at the commercialization of the road. You have to look at the administration of the road. You have to look at the operation of the road. You have to look at the technicality of the road, the economy, the marketing, and many things you need to put together. These are the things that will formulate your policy.

Policy is not a die-hard book. It’s a book that when you look at it, you say, okay, let us look at our five years’ goal. If we do our five years’ goal and you have to review your policy, maybe after two years you want to review your policy, are we on the right page? Are we moving forward or backward? If we are moving backward, what is delaying us?

If we are moving forward, can we roll for another two years to make another five years with the three years plan that we have on ground? So, that is policy.

But unfortunately, not that we don’t have people that can do it, but the people that will make decisions, do they know the decision that they want to take? When I was in the Ministry of Transportation, guess what? I was the only transport expert. So, I tried to professionalise the Ministry. I tried to bring in the policy and I tried to do the law.

Which law was that?

I was able to do the law of 2018, the transportation sector law by bringing all the agencies within the transport sector together as one, and have the Ministry of transportation as policymaker, while others are to specialise in their own area. I got that one done. Secondly, I also did the policy. I got the policy done because I had to go to all the universities and get the people on the operational field, come together and do the policy, which the Lagos government has today.

Unfortunately, I have gone to the governor. I have got approval to professionalise the ministry, and he has given me approval to employ 50. But unfortunately, the time has come to go, and where I sent the file to, because I can’t employ them myself. The Civil Service Commission has to employ them. So, now, that is the state.

What about the federal government?

If you look at Federal holistically, they continue handling these things, they have not been able to get it done. Instead of them asking us, the professionals, to come over and explain every detail of what we sent to them. We have worked with the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology in Zaria. We have gone to Calabar. We have gone to Uyo. We have gone to Kaduna, we have gone through all the nooks and crannies to formulate that federal policy.

So, your guess is as good as mine on why it hasn’t seen the light of the day. But each state will continue to do their own thing. But what we are doing in each state cannot be fully implemented until we have the federal one, so that we can key into the federal law. When you talk of the policy, you take the five modes – road, rail, air, pipeline, and then water. Each must have information about the administration, how do you administer them, how do you operate them, what are the infrastructural needs, what are the economic and other needs?

Then how do you bring in the marketing, the commercial, the PPP? That is when you talk of funding. How do you fund them? You can see how they fund the road in Lagos State. I mean, the federal government government. It’s either you go through the Sukuk. It’s either you go through the money being kept by the presidential task force, that is the excess money from crude oil. It’s either you go by giving Dangote, BUA and others Tax Credit, That okay, in the next five years, you are supposed to pay us N20 billion. Instead of paying us that N20 billion, we give you five years’ tax, we will not borrow money from you. Take the N20 billion, this is a road. Go and construct N5 billion here, go and construct N2 billion there.

These are the things that they need to come up in our policy. But when they are building, if it is N5 million they are building, we say, okay, we will pay you your N5 million within 20 years. The policy should say, okay, build, operate and transfer. They will build, they will toll it. And after maybe, we give you 15 years to collect your money back. Then we give you another four years or five years for profit. But before you hand over the road, in what condition are you handing over that road for us? You are doing it in the condition that when you build the road, it is. So you go and put it back as it was when you built it. Not that you now leave potholes and destroy the road for us, no.

So we can take charge of it and we can say, okay, we don’t want a toll gate anymore. Just as we did at Lekki Epe.

So these are the issues that need to be considered when it comes to policy. But where are they… I’m only giving you full details