http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/transportation-the-road-to-nowhere/105641/

This Day

23 December 2011

Transportation: The Road to Nowhere

Nasir El-rufai.  

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Macroeconomic indices have shown that for many growing economies, the value added by transport to the economy accounts for three to eight per cent of GDP, while employment in transport sector ranges between 2.5 and 11.5 per cent of total paid employment. For a struggling economy like Nigeria, intensified investment in transport will not only create millions of jobs, but also stimulate critical sectors of the economy, facilitate the safe and efficient movement of people and goods, promote economic development, competitiveness and even strengthen security – on which the Federal Government alone plans to spend, and waste about N3 billion every day, including weekends in 2012.

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It is imperative that Nigeria starts the process to opening up more of its roads (by making them usable), railways, and air and sea ports so we can mitigate the recurrent transportation crises that the country faces as well as ways of eliminating the present stagnation in economic activities to create opportunities for a true market driven economic growth by reduced cost of transportation and high quality services across the country. As the data below indicates, Nigeria’s transport densities and effective network access levels are much lower than that of comparable developing countries. This is unacceptable, implying an urgent need for large transport infrastructure investments.