The Transportation Cost in Nigeria
The cost of transportation is Nigeria keep increasing and affect the budget of the families badly. The reason behind the increment of the transportation cost are numerous. But lets explore some of them.
1) Fuel Prices.
Developed countries enjoys various means to power their transportation system like electricity, solar etc which are environmental friendly and cost less. But almost every mode of transportation still depend solely on petroluem products which are expensive and costly.
Nigeria have million of barrel of crude oil reserves with million of barrel output daily but still struggle with the utilities of the product. Reasons are simple and insane. The corrupt leaders prefer to export the product and import refined product back into the nations. The refineries are not working optimally and they make money as the imported fuel are sold back to the people costly. Buying these product costly are the main paramater that inflate the price of transportation fare in Nigeria.
Governmental agencies and individual are corrupt and abused the good policy of buyback package and other welfare service that backed the cost of imported fuel which was implemented to reduce the transportation cost. But, they gave wrong figures and "steal" in that guise till the extent that one of them complained of being tired of making money corruptly from the scheme. Now, Govenment of today have phased out that policy and the price of transportation fare keeping increasing.
2) POOR ROAD NETWORKS.
Our roads network are in very bad state. The road are not paved with poor drains making the road highly impassable and not comfortable for all mode of transportation as vehicle and cars hardly ply these roads.
Motorcycle and tricycle enjoys monopoly on these road and their fare will be higher than $1.7 for one km which will be lower a bit if the road is good and competitive with other mode of transportation.
3) VEHICLE MAINTANCE AND REPAIR.
Poor fuel quality and bad road network are reason why the car and vehicles are in bad shape and required repairs and proper maintance. As many vehicle have broke down, few that are managing charge high fare to be used.
The high cost of the maintance and repairs contributes to the high cost of transportation around Nigeria. Drivers and car owners complained of huge amount of money spent on spare parts and servicing of their car directly inflate the transport cost.
4) INSECURITY AND BRIBERY
There is high incidents of theft, kidnapping, vicious attack and extortion along the road network are reason for excess security measures which increased the transport cost in the nigeria.
Police brutality and extortion is high too. They demand money from drivers rampantly for no just reason. They will even injure and arrest them unjustly which leads to unncessary fear, cost and stress on the transportation sectors.
CONCLUSION
Despite the promised infrastructural development, Nigeria like other developing countries are still struggling with numerous transportation problems. These challenges of transportation are crippling the socio economic activities as every aspect of the economy are been serviced by the movement of people, good and service. Thanks to @terganftp for the topic and this is my entry.
Sounds like big transportation challenges in Nigeria.
However on the topic of exporting oil I live in Canada and we have the same national shame...if not a little worse. We are also a major oil producing country.
In fact Canada produces 2-3x as much oil as Nigeria does. But we probably get about the same income from it.
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In Canada we also don't have refineries for the oil. We ship it to the United States for processing. However, due to location we can ONLY ship to the United States and they know we don't have another market so we typically only get HALF what the regular price is per barrel of oil. Very Frustrating.
So people ask why don't we make our own refineries? Well, mostly because they are stupidly expensive! One estimate puts the cost of a 200,000 barrel per day would cost 6 Billion USD and you would need 10 of them to refine all the oil Nigeria produces. 60 Billion USD is a gigantic amount of money for any government.
Result: The big countries get richer off refineries and the smaller ones suffer (and Yes, Canada is a smaller country in the scheme of things).
As for road conditions. Can't blame the drivers for charging more on terrible roads. They know the repairs are coming and fuel economy is awful on bad road. Add police extortion and insecurity to the mix and I think drivers are no better off than everyone else :(
If it was me I think I'd be looking seriously at an electric offroad bike...with some solar panels to charge it.
Thanks for your contribution. I appreciate it.
We have four refineries, not to build a new one. To update and redesigned them is more costly than the new brand built by a single Nigerian. Its corrupt in play and they make more money from the business of importing fuel into the country.
Thanks for the topic and suggestion
Canada has 18 refineries but not enough to refine all our oil so we sell at discount to the USA.
As for corruption in the oil industry I tend to think the whole industry is kind of rotten. I'd avoid it altogether if it was possible.
Cars are just so useful though :(
18 refineries, wow.
Bur isn't better for any government to suffer once and have a working refinery rather than continuous sale of their mineral resources cheaply.
There is a problem with this idea though. The oil won't last forever. The amount in the ground gets smaller and smaller every year until there is nothing left. If you put a huge amount of money into the refinery and then run out of oil the refinery is not worth 0. Even worse you have to pay and dismantle it.
So, you have to do the math. How much will the refinery make over the life of the resource. Also remember that refineries need constant maintenance and repair or else they will end up worthless.
Think of the Power Companies in Nigeria... I've heard that they aren't at capacity because of corruption and lack of repair / parts. I think it would be exactly the same with refineries. You pay once...but then you have to pay again and again for repairs that may or may not happen. Then the oil runs out and the money was never recovered.
Look at it a different way though. You CAN grow palm trees for forever and their oil will never run out. If you were to encourage farmers to grow the crop AND make the refinery to convert that oil to diesel fuel then you can power diesel vehicles in the country forever.
Or perhaps you prefer to look at corn, cassava, potato, sugar cane or other crops like that. They can be used to make alcohol. That alcohol can be refined to make a very high quality gasoline substitute and you CAN make it forever!
Or perhaps you prefer to keep the corn, cassava and potato for people to eat...However, you have all the non digestible parts (corn cob, corn husk, etc) that can be put into a biodigester and be turned into natural gas which could also be used to power vehicles, generators, or turned into cooking fuel.
As much as I dislike my (and your) country getting a lousy deal because we sell our oil cheaply. I'd rather that lousy deal than have the government spend way too much now and forever trying to maintain a refinery that sounds great but ends up being a major headache.
Instead work on a sustainable fuel infrastructure where the average farmer gets more respect and more money for their valuable time and products.
.... just my humble opinion.
Feel free to disagree :)
I totally understand this view points.
The polite way of saying you don't agree with it 🤣 🤣🤣😁
I actually do agree with you..
Don't get me wrong.
I was only teasing you 😎
😂😂😂😂😀
Yay! 🤗
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I can see that many factors contributed to the high cost of transportation in the country.
Thank you for sharing these with us.
And good luck with the contest.
You are welcome