‘Residents don’t appreciate transport infrastructure in FCT’

Mr. Kayode Opeifa is the Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Transport Secretariat. In this interview with he speaks on how the transportation system in the FCT can be rebranded.

What has been your experience running this sensitive secretariat?

The transportation sector all over the country is very critical and it is always at the centre of socio-economic life. When you say socio-economic, transportation affects everybody and it doesn’t affect people differently. If the train system works, if the bus system works and the taxi system as well, it has impact on everybody: to the man who has a car, he drops it and for a man who doesn’t have one, he has an option in moving in more efficient ways.

My experience has been that the FCT is blessed with a lot of transportation infrastructure and a very robust transportation system and one of the best road networks in the country. However, maybe because a lot of residents don’t go out of the city, they do not appreciate this system that much.

People expect so much from the government and for that reason, whatever government does has to be properly explained to them because the level of communication has not been effecient as expected, so they don’t care to understand that government has done so much; especially in the FCT transport sector.

Generally, people in the FCT are very tolerable and they are people that if information is passed to them would obey because a huge number of them are either public servants or working for somebody. But one other thing is that they tend not to appreciate the value of these infrastructure; maybe they see them springing up with ease, but there are so many parts of Nigeria where this infrastructure doesn’t even exis. Abuja has the highest number of traffic lights in Nigeria, but people don’t really appreciate it, maybe, because they have not realised that what they are seeing is what they will see if they go to cities like New York. Not all state capitals in Nigeria have these valuable assets.

What are you doing to evacuate rickety vehicles from the roads?

Rickety vehicles are a problem all over the country and it is sometimes a situation of the economy. Nobody wants to drive a rickety vehicle. If that is what someone can afford, then you see them driving, but our job as government, is to make sure that you don’t put what is not safe on the road. So sometimes what you call rickety may not be rickety by VIO standards.

The key is safety. Safety to the person driving the vehicle, safety to members of the public and safety to the environment. We all agree by our definition that rickety vehicles are vehicles that are unsafe and not road worthy, and once a vehicle is not road worthy, it should be off the road.

However, people are running away because their vehicles may not pass the road worthiness test. It is for that reason that you see our men on the road, but ordinarily, we do not want them to be on the road stopping vehicles, but we still keep having our men on the road to stop vehicles and when they stop them people will begin to flash all sorts of identities. Those are challenges faced by the vehicle inspection officers (VIOs).

We are going to do a stakeholders’ engagement to sort that out and change the city to the standard where drivers or motorists will respect our law enforcement officers.

What are you doing to curtail the activities of “kabu kabu” drivers and “okada” operations in the city?

That is a very serious issue, and it is a major concern. By and large, we are working very hard with law enforcement agencies on compliance. We are also working on sustainable development. We believe by improving our public transport system, it will get people to use less of those prohibited vehicles. The transportation sector is the easy entry point for socio-economic survival. So a lot of people come into this sector for economic survival and they can go to any length to fight you if you want to enforce any law. That is what we are seeing with the taxi system. But we have met with various stakeholders and we have all agreed on minimum standards to ensure that the sector is sanitised.

So right now, enforcement and rebranding has commenced and we will be holding a stakeholders forum soon where we will bring all the operator to discuss, and we will all agree with the minimum standards.

The FCT minister is also working on the mass transit system and that is why he has been working hard to get the rail where we have gotten it to.

What are the things the secretariat is doing to check the activities of taxi?

I said there are a lot of things in that regard. I have had not less than six meetings with their leadership, but the problem is membership issue. We are now going out to meetings with them at their various platforms. The mass transit sector is also engaging them at their various parks to really reorganise them because there is a need for that. We need to reorganise the entire public mass transit system in the FCT and we are working on that because it is better to plan right so that you can deploy correctly. If they put up their policies, it is on those policies that the structures will stand, but if the structures are not there and we put up the processes, we will not be able to achieve results. So what we are doing now is ensuring that we have the policies well understood by the operators. Then there are also structures on ground that they don’t respect. We will want them to understand how these structures work, then the processes will now be released to them. Their leadership has bought into the idea but we need to carry the followers along as well and by the end of January most likely, the stakeholders forum will hold a meeting with the top hierarchy of the various taxi operators. We want to put up a system that whoever is engaged in the business will create wealth for himself.

All over the world, like in New York, Chicago and London, people who drive taxis are very wealthy and the society gives them huge respect because they own the industry. I know we have more taxis in the FCT than Lagos and the taxi industry in Lagos is worth over N30bn. So that shows you that the one in the FCT shouldn’t be less than N20-30m worth of business daily.

Therefore, we need to reform the sector. One of my own focuses is to reform the public transport system and make it a job and wealth creation sector where people in ties and suits will show interest and invest, where banks will show interest and also invest and where real estate investors will see that that sector is a sector where they can match their investment with other sectors. So one of my responsibilities is to turn it around and make it rebranded, but they will have to cooperate and change the way they operate. Is Uber taxi not the same taxi system? Where are Taxi File, Gaxi Go? Where is Juremi? They are doing the same business and they are making so much cash, so why not this same taxi people? We will work with them and get people to invest in that sector.