Haulage In Nigeria: The Quest For Roadworthiness By Chigozie Chikere

A little systemic imagination helps to convey the scale of neglect to roadworthiness in Nigeria’s trucking sector. If the 61,090 people who lost their lives in 14,087 road crashes nationwide between 2006 and 2014 lived in one community, its population would be similar to Lagos of 1872 when it became a British colony. Lagos itself which records annually the highest number of road crashes and fatalities is home to the largest fleet of articulated vehicles in Nigeria as it registers an average of 12,000 trucks every year. In 2011, the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) reported that Nigeria has an average of 5,000 tankers involved in wet cargo haulage, and 2,500 trailers in dry cargo plying Nigeria’s roads daily. FRSC records also revealed that between 2007 and June 2010, a total of 4,017 tanker/trailer crashes were recorded on Nigerian roads, with a yearly average of 1,148 crashes and a total of 4,076 persons killed in such crashes involving tankers and trailers.Evidently, the figure has increased since then. Apart from usual road crashes, there are also cases of unlatched and therefore falling freight containers which account for hundreds of fatalities every year.

For Africa, the landscape is almost uniformly bleak. The International Road Federation, Geneva Programme Center reported that approximately 2.4 million people have died in road accidents across the world in 2014, with a daily record of 3,000 deaths. The worst hit, with 1.2 million deaths annually, are low to middle-income countries; a circumstance confirmed by the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility Coordinator.Most African countries,including Nigeria, fall within the middle-income category and thus are among the worst hit. 

The causes of fatal road crashes in Nigeria have been categorized into human, mechanical, and environmental factors.  While the human factor accounts for up to 90% of accidents, the mechanical and environmental factors contribute to the other 10%. The percentage may be relatively low yet its effect is usually catastrophic. Prominent among the mechanical factors that lead to fatal road crashes are un-roadworthy vehicles.

Worse, the form of non-roadworthiness among haulage trucks that convey freight containers in and out of Nigeria’s seaports is a particularly dangerous sort. Granted, trucking like all other aspects of road transport service is purely entrepreneurial and private sector driven but the absence of a statutory regulatory agency that must spell out and enforce safety regulations, standards for tractive and carrying units, standards of training for handlers, and other operational technicalities makes a muddle of the entire setup.Regardless of countless FRSC and Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) talkshops about road safety and roadworthiness, the number of aging trucks keep increasing and the rate at which freight containers fall on our highways is still alarmingly high, even as fears mount that the situation may worsen considering the fact that the new auto policy of government has raised the price of all vehicles including trucks.

Incidentally, the human cost of the crisis on our highways is paid largely by innocent commuters and pedestrians, for neglect of roadworthiness especially of a container-laden truck results in a spiral effect, increasing the rate of road crashes, deaths, losses of various dimensions, and pretty everything that can go wrong in the event of a crash.At Ojuelegba, Lagos on September 2, a container-laden truck on high speed fell off an overhead bridge and crashed on cars and pedestrians crushing to death a large number of young and innocent citizens returning home from work. And this is just one out of so many similar incidents this year. The shadow of non-roadworthiness of trucks on our highways lingers, wasting lives and property, damaging investments and finances, bringing the industry to disrepute, and straining social order for years to come.

This mess will not be fixed quickly. Even if a regulator is commissioned, the number of un-roadworthy trucks will remain worryingly high for several years. This is because trucking is a capital intensive endeavor and most of the un-roadworthy trucks are owned and managed by people who are not gainfully employed elsewhere and as such the trucks serve as their only means of livelihood. In a sense, therefore, non-roadworthiness of freight trucks in our haulage industry is linked to unemployment. And unemployment is becoming more chronic as young school leavers roam the streets for years in an endless search for jobs that are not there. Compared to issues of non-roadworthiness, long term unemployment is harder to cure, as people’s skills atrophy and they become detached from the workforce. At that point, they become very much aggressive and rebellious to society and this manifests more when circumstance compels them to make a detour into fields they never set out to explore. One of such fields is the haulage industry.

Though some class of politicians favour outright deregulation of the service sector insisting that big government destroys jobs, there are ways in which government money can help. But it is also plain that the roadworthiness crisis is not just about low funds for maintenance: It cannot be solved with provision of loan facilities alone. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that haulage companies and vehicle inspection officers had battled issues of road worthiness long before the job and financial crisis hit. The most recent port reform that led to port concessioning reduced the Federal Government to landlord of the ports leaving all terminal operations including haulage to private firms. The boost in trade brought about by globalization has increased cargo throughput as well as the demand for haulage services and the bad state of our roads has called for serious infrastructure rehabilitation, improvement in driving skills,new combination of transport technologies, and provision of viable alternatives like rail. But investors and government have failed to respond to these deep changes in the industry. The shift in demand has a long way to go as one special report of The Economist on the future of work explains. It suggests that an important part of any job agenda must involve, among other things, changes in education and more training.

There is need for government to declare a state of emergency in the haulage industry until un-roadworthy trucks are fished out completely and weeded out. But before then, government must create an enabling environment for operators of haulage trucks either by reducing import duty for trucks and Lorries or outrightly subsidizing the cost of spare parts, preferably at zero duty, the way it did in 2012 for the airline industry. Further, government should prioritise policies that promote jobs creation at least to absorb young prospective entrepreneurs to enable them gain work experience and raise capital before entering into business. This would save them the trouble of entering the haulage business with substandard and rickety trucks. Jobs creation will also provide a soft landing for those already in the industry but who may lose their trucks when they are impounded and marked off the road.

Many remedies, such as regular roadworthiness checks for every truck and issuing of certificates whether computerized or manual, take time. However, it is good news to know that Nigeria has endorsed computerized roadworthiness checks but that only makes it all the more shocking that politicians have done so little owing to the fact that even Ghana started computerized checks as far back as 2008. The National Assembly (NASS) of Nigeria is stuck in a sterile debate over which of the six transport industry bills before it should be jettisoned and which should be passed into law. The Presidency on another flank has pitted itself in a decisive war against corruption and as such yet undecided about which of the existing transport and maritime agencies should metamorphose into the proposed and widely favoured National Transport Commission (NTC). Across the federation the state governors’ responses to the crash in oil price coupled with their ‘empty treasury’ mantra seem designed to drive up unemployment and in consonance generate more excuses for operators of un-roadworthy trucks. The Federal Government can and must do better.

With a commensurate political will the quest for roadworthiness will take less time. Unfortunately, while developed countries are placing issues of road safety at the front burner, it is taking Nigerian government too long to grasp the seriousness of the roadworthiness crisis. Many people will suffer because of that.

Chigozie Chikere,

Chartered Member, The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport (CILT) Nigeria,

Rector, Emdee Shipping & Maritime College, Apapa.

E-mail: grandefather@yahoo.com

Phone: 08039504536