Why we can’t slash transport fares – Lagos bus drivers

Commercial bus drivers in Lagos State have failed to comply with the government’s directive to reduce transport charges by 25 percent.

Commuters have lamented that they did not notice any reduction in prices, with fares fluctuating depending on the availability of passengers and the level of traffic.

But the bus drivers stated that slashing transport fares would negatively affect their business.

A passenger identified as Dele, who commutes from the Iyana Ipaja area of Lagos State to Berger noted that he had not noticed any reduction in transport fares.

He said, “I have not noticed the 25 percent reduction in transport prices which was ordered by the government. It only fluctuates between certain prices depending on the availability of passengers on the road and the traffic.”

Another regular commuter, who identified himself as Hope, stated that there had been no reduction in the transport fare charged by bus operators since the announcement for the slash in transport fare was made.

However, some commercial bus drivers at some bus parks stated that slashing transport fares by 25 percent was not realistic.

A bus driver, who simply identified himself as Adewale, lamented the hardship faced by commercial bus drivers and other motorists since the removal of the fuel subsidy.

Adewale, who conveys passengers from Berger to Oshodi, added that nothing would make him reduce his fare charges.

He said, “The cost of the tickets that they are selling to us is still high. I heard the cost has been slashed in some parks but it has not reached here. It may be reduced here later. Even if they reduce it, does it mean anything?

“If there is something that needs to be reduced, let us go to the filling stations. It is from there that the matter can be settled. A reduction in ticket prices cannot make me reduce my bus fare. If they make the reduction of transport fares compulsory, I will just park my vehicle.”

Another Lagos driver, who refused to mention his name but preferred to be called Pastor, said, “We want the government to know that this is untold hardship on the people. If it is not affecting anybody, it is affecting drivers too.

“I work all day long and at the end of the day, I go home with peanuts because the price of fuel and the cost of living has really increased.

“It is not the bus park union that is maintaining my car. So, they cannot do much to help the situation. The tyre we used to buy for N6,000 is now N13,000. The engine oil we buy for N3,500 is N8,000.”

However, another driver, Yaro, who loads passengers from Berger to Ikosi, noted that he had reduced his transport fare even before the Lagos State Government’s directive because the number of passengers has gone down.

On when Nigerians would start seeing the price increase, he said, “NNPC is like the sole distributor of petroleum products now, so once you see a change in the price of petrol at their outlets, then other marketers will implement it.”
The Executive Secretary, Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, Clement Isong, alluded to the fact the dealers were not importing petrol despite the fact that the government recently issued licences to about six marketers to bring in products.

Asked to speak on the import of PMS by other marketers and whether they were sourcing forex from the I&E window or the parallel market, Isong replied, “The I&E window is illiquid. There’s no money there.

“To buy products, it costs you between $25m to $30m. You can’t find it in the I&E window. So it doesn’t work and that is why people are not importing.

“We can’t find dollar again, you can’t find it right now. Nigeria has to sort out the security issues in the Niger Delta so that we can increase our daily crude oil output. If we increase it to 1.8 or two million barrels per day, then there’ll be dollar in the market. So we need to stop oil theft.”

FG should intervene

On the apprehension of a possible hike in petrol price, Isong stated that this was inevitable if the dollar continued to rise against the naira, but noted that the government might have to intervene.

“Well, the President himself said in his speech that if they find petrol prices moving too high, they would intervene. We don’t want prices to move too high, nobody wants that.

“So if the dollar continues to climb, we are expecting some sort of intervention from the government based on what the President said,” the MOMAN official stated.

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He further explained that PMS was different from diesel in terms of pricing because petrol was newly deregulated.

“The dealer that has bulk of the stock is the NNPC. So it influences the price in the market. Diesel, on the other hand, is different, because it has been deregulated for a very long time. So people will sell petrol depending on their cost structure, loans they took from the banks, forex, etc.

“Many things are put into consideration by dealers before coming up with their selling prices. There’s no one person who sets or controls the price. Nobody is controlling the price of PMS. Right now, NNPC, however, will continue to control the flow of the price. But after a while, that will stop,” Isong explained.

Earlier, the President, PETROAN, Billy Gillis-Harry, while speaking on the matter, had said, “So long as the naira is losing against the dollar, the price of petrol in our retail outlets will continue to increase. To address this, he called on Tinubu to make sure that Nigeria’s refineries were put back to use.

“We have requested that the President should declare a state of emergency on our refineries in order to speed up their repairs.

“That is the one sure way to go, in order to be able to predict the price of petroleum products, because for now, every PMS you buy in any retail outlet is dollarised,” Gillis-Harry stated.

Meanwhile, the CBN last week attributed the continued fall of the naira against the dollar to the diversion of Diaspora remittances to the parallel market.

The CBN Acting Governor, Folashodun Shonubi, spoke while delivering a lecture titled ‘Diaspora Remittances and Nigeria Economic Development’ at the National Institute for Security Studies in Abuja.

Shonubi said a lot of Diaspora remittances arrived in Nigeria in dollars and end up in the parallel market without being officially documented.

It is still unclear at what point the President Bola Tinubu administration plan to intervene in the market to arrest the unfolding crisis.