ALFRED OKUGBENI SPEAKS ON THE CHALLENGES OF THE HAULAGE INDUSTRY IN NIGERIA
The Chief Executive Officer, SinoTrucks Nigeria Limited and a trustee of Road Haulage Transporters Association of Lagos, Alfred Okugbeni, speaks with journalists on the challenges of the haulage industry in Nigeria. It is very informative, especially for those people intending to invest in haulage business. Relax and enjoy it.

Why are there several associations for haulage transporters?
The existing associations are tilted towards container freighting and wet cargo; there was no focus on dry cargo organised haulage, which is done by corporate haulers. So, we decided to bring the focus to that area. We are all working together for an industry that is professionally run with some sanity. Although our members are primarily into the haulage of dry cargo, they also cut across other aspects of haulage.

The haulage sector is often perceived as unorganized. Has that been your experience?
Well, in this industry, there is no cohesion. There has been no formal association where members get actively involved. Trying to bring people together has been a bit difficult but people are responding. This association has very credible members that are very much interested in bringing changes to the way the haulage industry is perceived and run. Now we have a secretariat with an executive secretary that is up and running.

Falling trucks within the metropolis and along the highways are a common sight. What is responsible for this?
There are three primary factors that cause accidents – the human, mechanical and infrastructure problems. The roads are not in their best shape. Areas where you have a lot of trucks turning upside down are usually places where you have bad roads. To a large extent, the bad roads are responsible for the accidents because a loaded truck is a delicate object. If it tilts, it can easily turn over.

Then, you factor in the drivers or other road users. It is unfortunate that in this country, there is no formal school for training truck drivers; there are very few. The only way most drivers learn is informally, graduating from motor boys into truck drivers by observation. This has contributed to a lot of the crashes you see on the road.

ROHTAL is trying to address that. The Lagos State Driving Institute is one institution that is also trying to do something. There are a few private truck driving schools owned by some of us in the association but the impact has not been felt. Total Nigeria owns a truck driving school in Ibadan but it is tailored towards meeting the needs of Total truck drivers; they go there for retraining.

The bulk of the truck drivers are not formally trained to drive trucks. Driving a truck is sensitive; a truck on its own is a heavy vehicle. By the time it is loaded with 30 tonnes of materials whether wet or dry cargo, it becomes a weapon of mass destruction. So when you find a situation where the drivers are not properly trained, these things are inevitable. Over time, we have observed that a whole lot of these crashes are avoidable if only drivers were trained on safety.

On the maintenance culture, most people in the haulage business are on small scale; people who got into the business by mistake because it was not planned. Perhaps they were unemployed and their brother overseas sent them a fairly used truck. Before you know it, they go into haualge and they don’t have a proper structure for maintenance. They don’t have workshop for repairs. Very few outsource the maintenance to workshops. Most of the trucks are managed by roadside mechanics; the trucks are not serviced; there is no preventive maintenance.

Most of our members, who are mostly organised private sector transporters, have workshops. One of the things we are trying to put in place is to have a joint facility in the future where we can all have one or two zonal areas for maintaining our trucks. Transport really is a different business from maintenance. We want a situation where we can outsource the maintenance of all the trucks to the joint facility. That is one of the projects we want to undertake. Ordinarily a haulage company does not need to have a workshop if they have a place it can outsource the service to.

Trucks drivers are said to be often extorted by security agencies. How true is this?
That is the reality on the road in many cases. The Federal Government came out over a year ago to say the collection of revenue on the road is illegal. People should desist from it but some local and state governments still have this taskforce on the road that harass truck drivers for revenue collection. Sometimes when the drivers try to run away, it results into accidents. For that reason, ROHTAL is partnering with ex-service men that is the Nigeria legion, a group of ex-military and para military personnel. They provide some kind of security for people on the road so that you are not extorted by these touts who call themselves revenue collectors. Our drivers are really suffering from these things. We plan to have their stickers on our trucks so that when such issues arise, we can call on them to intervene.

There was a time the executive secretary of ROHTAL attended a meeting organised by the joint task board. When she raised this issue, all she was told was that the government was working on it. The Joint task board was working on it to harmonize tax and revenue collection on the highway but then we cannot wait forever. We are trying to find a way whereby our members can travel the length and breadth of the country without harassment by partnering with the ex service men.

Cargo clearance at the ports is often said to be time consuming. How has this affected haulage?
Although the Federal Government in recent times has tried to streamline the cargo clearance system, there are still a whole lot of bottlenecks. The business of a transporter is to pick cargo and deliver it but in some cases, you find the transporter being harassed for one thing or the other. The problem of cargo clearance is outside of our control, so we can only do some advocacy with the government to streamline it. In many countries, you can clear cargo within a day but here, it takes more than seven days, depending on how fast the process is and how congested the port is. It is really a big problem. There is also a need to develop other ports so as to decentralise the process and decongest Lagos ports, considering the volume of imports being handled there.

Truck drivers into container freighting and wet cargo have complained about the lack of staging areas. How is this affecting haulage sector?
When the ports were planned, it was done with a limited mindset, such that there was no provision for staging areas. I understand a place is being developed opposite Tincan Island by the Ministry of Works as a staging area. The absence of appropriate staging areas is responsible for the traffic in Apapa; most of the trucks are parked on the road, hoping they would be called into the port. Lagos State on its own has designated a place around Orile Bus Stop as a truck park. It is being used by the tanker drivers. It is still not enough though. Some private companies along Lagos/Sagamu have also built their own parks. Ogun State government has also built one or two parks. The ones built by Ogun State government have not been put to full use because they have not been properly developed. Our intention is to approach neighbouring states like Ogun to allow access to those parks so that our members can use them and wait. It is also not to our benefit that the trucks come in and wait all day on the roads to load cargo. Although most of our members have their own private parks it would help if those who don’t have can wait somewhere.

How can the government encourage professionalism in haulage?
Haulage is a strategic and sensitive industry because goods that are produced have to be moved out and even raw materials used to produce the goods have to be moved to where they are needed. For that reason, about 80 per cent of cargo in Nigeria is moved by road. Given this nature, there is the need for a transport policy; there is none in Nigeria. It would help to put standards and structures in place and address everything that is wrong with haulage in Nigeria.

For example, there are many overloaded trucks on our roads. Those days, we used to have weigh bridges at the toll gates but now, vehicles that are supposed to load 30 tonnes are loading 50 tonnes and nobody checks that. Overtime, the roads that are being done would go bad. It is the policy that would spell out the minimum standard for a truck. In some other countries, there are inspectors who check even the wear and tear of the tyres. In Nigeria, we have trucks on the road without spare tyres; some have worn out tyres and without basic safety equipment.

There is also a difference between the average driver’s licence and the truck driver’s licence. In the US, for example, if you commit any offence as a driver, you can be suspended for a number of months. If you repeat that offence, you can be stopped from driving totally. It is the lack of a transport policy that has made the haulage sector an all comers affair. In the UK, you get a licence to go into haulage and once the company violates any of the policies, the company can be suspended or fined for something as common as violating the number of driving hours. In Nigeria, haulage is not regulated; you don’t need a license to start a haulage business.
From: http://tectono..com/