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Research Challenges for Nigerian Road Transportation Sector in Covid-19 Pandemic Era
Authored by Danladi Slim Matawal
The
growing number of studies on the impact of COVID-19 is often chosen in the
context of developed countries, highlighting a gap in the understanding of how
the pandemic is impacting developing countries. There is need to acknowledge
the effect/ impact on transportation in emerging economies where lockdowns and
restrictions on movement may not be wholly ineffective but even more suited to
the level of psychological response of the people. There is not just poor
transportation infrastructure but also lack of a clearly defined transportation
system that is effectively managed and regulated by operators while the economy
is largely informal. The outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus was deemed a
pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11th March 2020. To date,
there have been cases confirmed in at least 203 countries, areas or
territories, causing unprecedented measures to be taken by many countries, such
as travel restrictions and restrictions on social gatherings. Nigeria is a key
regional actor in the African continent with over 200 million people, and it
confirmed its first case in Lagos in February 2020.
The
emerging economy faces institutional adversity with underlying and persistent
economic challenges as it copes with the pandemic and both effect and responses
have varied widely in the country. Virtual lives have essentially been
instituted for the upper and middle class just like the global situation, more
people are working from home. This has reduced travel needs; which before now was
essential because inadequate power supply, internet connections and the large
informal economy in Nigeria has often meant that people must travel daily to
work. The road modal system is the most prevalent and extensively used form of
transportation in Nigeria which grappling with challenges of inadequate fleets
of public transport vehicles and dilapidated road networks, makes for
significant concerns for the state. The population is growing fast and it has
to struggle with the poor infrastructure leading to increased passenger cars
and taxis on roads, which cause traffic congestion and gridlocks at peak
periods; example, it is estimated the commuters lose up to 75% of their weekly
working hours because of traffic congestion in Lagos [1], the busiest and commercial
centre of the country.
Nigerian
COVID-19 Update & Vulnerability
For
situations of emergencies like epidemics, pandemics and any spontaneous or
contagious situation, Nigeria is viewed as posing high vulnerability medically
because of its large population; the coronavirus disease is one such situation.
The dense population of some cities and thin density of facilities has led to
overstrained infrastructure. All the 36 states in Nigeria had confirmed cases
of COVID-19 but the number of cases and deaths varied with the highest in Lagos
followed by Abuja. Earlier in 2021, following relaxation of lockdown measures
round the globe, Nigeria also relaxed its tight supervision and it appeared all
was getting back to normalcy on the road towards recovery. Currently, the 3rd
wave of pandemic due to the Delta variant has hit many countries and figures of
infections and isolations (especially from international travellers) have been
rising and some panic measures and pronouncements are already being embarked
upon, again primarily in Lagos. Overall, there was devastating impact on road transportation
especially at the peak and immediate post-peak periods in 2020.
Commercial
transportation comprising of Commuter Buses, Taxis, Tricycles also called Keke
Napep) and Motorcycles (known as Okadas) comprised the main means of
transportation in major Nigerian cities especially commercial hubs and state
capitals. These form of transport was already one of the biggest challenges for
all municipalities, especially in big metropolitan cities where people are
highly concentrated at the same space at the same time before COVID-19 and in
fact in some cities like the Federal Capital city of Abuja and most of Lagos,
Keke Napeps and Okadas were banned because of the menace they had constituted
leading to traffic congestion with high contribution to road accidents and
crashes. However, though they were banned to instil organization and sanity,
nonetheless they constitute essential commercial transport modes in some parts
of state capitals and commercial towns/cities and almost the main
transportation mode for Local Government and rural short distance movements.
The BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) is a special intervention public road transport
mode with a special reserved lane in Lagos while numerous agencies and
organizations as well as major businesses and organizations (including
construction companies) own staff buses that operate on specified routes to
convey workers to and from work. With COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing
consequences, proper organizational and logistical frameworks are required now
that there is an ease down and workers and public commuters need to resume a
measure of movements. It is not clear if commercial transportation unions,
municipalities and transport operators have risen to the many challenges of
organizing all passenger fluxes to serve all needs and new regulations without
losing efficiency and profitability with adequate and acceptable prices for
users.
Specific
COVID-19 Road Transportation Impacts
Overall
COVID-19 pandemic impact on transportation in Nigeria can be evaluated in the
context of the developing countries bedevilled by economic and social
difficulties that preceded the pandemic; and the experience may suggest a need
for new and different policies in the sector. Experience clearly presents
practical implications for public and private sector policymakers, as the
country navigates this precarious time and charts a new path for individuals
and Nigeria. The influence of COVID-19 extended from the economic to the social
and religious activities which are the key factors that have confirmed why and
how transportation in all highly affected towns and states became disruptive
and consequential. The influence of COVID-19 on transportation can be assessed
based on the dynamic changes to the commuters’ transport demands and relative
fare prices during the pandemic, the operators’ expected revenue or income
structures and the loss in government revenues, which is loss emanating from
taxes, tickets and other related government transport income generations
sources. At the peak periods, the scale of the global pandemic, as well as the
limited social contact and government lockdown restrictions, dictates that
research projects requiring fieldwork or sampling be based on convenient
procedure as preferred method of gathering data such as gsm, e-mailing, audio
phoning and other communication techniques. Convenience sampling procedure
involves non-randomised experimentation and relies mainly on individual
respondents or groups of respondents that are nearby or easy to reach. Economic
activities, social activities and religious activities during COVID-19 were
impacted differently by the disrupted transport services due to the pandemic.
Road
transportation impact on the economy
As
residents could not travel, as usual, a significant impact caused by the
pandemic on their economic activities became a major consequence. The informal
economic sector is enormous in Nigeria accounting for as much as 65% of the
economy in some towns, cities and states. These economic activities include
trading, transportation, construction, food preparation, mechanical and
electrical work, fashion design and hairdressing, all dependent on travel and
some form of road movements to undertake and they require some form of human
physical presence. There are those who hawk and sell goods in traffic, operate
Uber and other forms of transportation or must travel to provide services who
can no longer engage in these activities, thereby impacting negatively on the
economy. These businesses are managed by low-income selfemployed owners
operating in a mostly cash-dominated society; and they must leave their homes
daily to earn an income. To these, in addition to lockdown barring free
movements, increased cost of transportation, shortage/lack of transportation
mode and traffic congestion have been major impact of COVID-19 on
Transportation. The scenario was that there were few fleets of public transport
in periods of lockdown with many people wishing to travel. With the demand for
transportation being greater than the supply, due to lock down and restriction,
the transporters increased their fares. The chain-mail effect is that this high
cost of transportation then added to the overall cost of living in towns and
cities in particular. Similarly, the cost of food items increased.
Road
transportation impact on social and religious activities
Religious
activities, which seem such essential part of life, Nigeria being the 6th
largest Christian population (87 million) and 5th largest Muslim population (90
million) in the world [2], suffered due to the challenges of COVID-19,
especially the social distancing regulation. Regularly, thousands of
worshippers travel to different worship centres, and due to the lockdown, this
movement was affected. In 2020, the Christian Easter and Muslim Ramadan seasons
both fell in the peak COVID-19 lockdown period and many worshippers could not
typically travel to places of worship. In a secular sense, religion may be
considered a social activity but then disruption in transport services due to
the pandemic impacted badly on social and some essential activities like
leisure, typical shopping and visits (example to friends and other family
members). It may be recalled that at certain periods, partial curfews were
required to curb movement. In typical social orientation of many Nigerians,
many people like to socialise in the evenings and weekends, visit clubs and
attend parties; which the restrictions on transportation impacted. Nigerian
collectivistic society habits where there is a fundamental value in a long-term
commitment to groups suffered. Many people who wished to check on their friends
or volunteer to distribute palliative cares to friends and neighbours were
prevented from their practices by restrictions and the lack of transportation
impacted upon their desires.
Pandemic
Research Challenges on Road Transport Research
Indeed,
the Nigerian road transportation sector faced challenges especially on the need
to cope with the potential disruption caused by the pandemic and a national
lockdown that lasted from 4-6 months. Unfortunately, the provision of road
services, and the requirement to ensure the proper operation and maintenance,
often goes unnoticed even if disregarded by national authorities because until
there is an emergency before fire-brigade interventions and approaches are
designed. But we have discussed already that there were strong negative impacts
of the pandemic on levels of traffic [3,4]. Strong spontaneous government
regulatory response in line with WHO and other global dictations were quite visible
primarily to stop spread of coronavirus, cure those infected and get as many
vaccinated as possible. But then a large measure of road transportation
response was left to the operators essentially characterised by panic reactions
to government social distancing and lockdown measures, curfews and sets of
related regulations and guidelines. Little road transportation engineering and
management, internal business management, and overall economic impact measures
may have been in the minds of the operators except complains about the
devastating economic effects. Government itself and the transport operators
were hardly prepared for such an event and became more focused on prioritising
their survival strategies and lobbying for interventions and relief packages.
However sustainable engineering approaches and responses must be made to learn
and develop schemes that can be applied in case of new waves and future similar
events in Nigeria and other emerging economies of Africa and the world.
Challenges for public transportation should be viewed in terms of consequences
and possible alternatives for the Covid-19 pandemic through strategic
precision- application [5].
A lot
of city/urban and even rural challenges have to do with coping with peak hour
traffic periods when workers have to go to work and student/school children
commute to school, and later return to their homes. With COVID-19 pandemic and
social distancing consequences, mass transportation became actually the main
barrier for students and workers who are all highly dependent on transport to
go back to their daily routines with comfort and safety. Thus, the objective of
a good research would be to determine a demand control able to equalize the
number of passengers in each car, respecting the COVID-19 social distancing
protocols. The number of passengers in each time-of-day range should be
combined into suitable predictive models that include independent variables
related to passenger’s behavior indicating that almost 90% of all passengers
are following a very strict and straight daily routine that can be coordinated
and scheduled creating enough time space one from the other to avoid
undesirable concentrations inside buses and bus stops. In a sense therefore, a
very accurate urban management tool can arise from the study and may be able to
solve not only the pandemic issues but also to improve local public services
efficiency, to attract private investments and to improve citizen’s quality of
life [6,7].
In
Nigeria, public transport being exclusively comprised of private bus operators
with a measure of regulation by traffic control officers and the police,
research needs to be planned by reorganizing daily routines and schedules to
move people from their points of origin to their destinations in a real time
demand coordination to avoid crowding and time and money losses. Therefore,
studies should seek to answer such research queries that: Observe and find any
patterns in passengers’ daily behaviour; and, determining the main variables
responsible for passenger’s decision to take public transportation or ride in
their own cars, with other modal systems relatively undeveloped. From these
preliminary results, the research question would then arise whether it is
possible to determine the demand for public transport to organize it so as not
to create agglomerations in times of pandemic. Thus, the objective would be to
determine a demand control able to equalize the number of passengers in each
car, respecting the COVID-19 social distancing protocols. In the tight options
available to commuters in Nigeria, it is possible that many passengers can
switch from private cars to public transport to private cars and vice versa and
some decisions are likely to cause instability in demand, leading to increasing
traffic congestion, pollution and time loss. The Nigerian situation also proves
that crowding in public transport systems have implications for the estimation
of demand. Rider characteristics must also be considered and included in the
model in order to stimulate coordinated supportive policies able to attract
passengers to public transport.
Daily
information must be collected and collated for the most critical routes
susceptible to high traffic, congestion and road crashes/accidents. In terms of
research methodology, the number of passengers in each day range time must be
combined in different models that include independent variables like time of
day, weather conditions, the structure of traffic especially bus and other
vehicular type and other binary general variables like school day, pay day and
crime; indicating that almost 90% of all passengers follow very strict and
straight daily routine, mostly, from their houses up to school and work and
back, that can be coordinated and scheduled creating enough time space one from
the other to avoid undesirable concentrations inside buses and bus stops due to
COVID-19 pandemic [8].
A
project that must be adequate to be applied as the study objective will not
only be to create a management tool capable to predict demand but also to
organize passenger trips, scheduling it according to their daily appointments
in order to have buses and other traffic capacity in an optimal usage level for
users and operators. This way, the outcome can contribute to a sustainable
public transport model and system in the future, respecting not only the number
of persons allowed per car but also taking in consideration of other important
indicators like fee and gas prices, weather conditions and other alternative
transport offers. We must not also lose foresight that the use of gasoline may
come to an end sooner than expected, like in 2035, so that we can factor in the
place of e-vehicles in our researches [9].
Conclusion
Overall
COVID-19 pandemic impact on transportation in Nigeria can be evaluated in the
context of the developing countries bedevilled by economic and social
difficulties that preceded the pandemic. The unique scenario is that there is
overcrowding in urban centres usually likely with unhygienic communal or
worksite accommodation and transported to and from the workplace packed in
small buses or personal cars, the population presents vulnerable easy target
for pandemics, especially the coronavirus. Yet the response, with Nigeria as
case-study, has mostly simply been a government magnification of WHO and other
countries’ suggestions that are spontaneously adhered to by the population
without research and modifications to suit peculiar circumstances. In the end,
there is hardly any analysis on how to balance economic interests and public health
risks, public transport operators being on the receiving end. Indeed, the
effect on the disproportionately dominant road transportation sector is
devastating, translating to dramatic and devastating chainmail harm on the
economy and social activities of the population. But if properly constructed
research studies are articulated and conducted, results can be obtained whose
outcomes will lead to earlier and faster transportation recoveries and
application to solve future situations of similar proportions. Therefore as the
current pandemic is being fought to conclusion, it is recommended that our
traffic and transportation models be studied and prepared for emergencies,
while specific route studies are initiated, convenient pandemic-suitable
methodologies identified and schemes worked out for any future situation scale
and devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The experience may suggest a need to
examine the road transportation sector for new and different policies in place
of a clueless and nonchalant attention
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