I'm not someone who moves around a lot, either commuting to work or going out to have fun and that means I rarely use public transportation, maybe once or twice a month, and sometimes I can go several months without the need to go somewhere that needs public transportation. But even at that, I'm still aware of the current state of public transportation in my vicinity. If I had written this post around this same time last year, I probably wouldn't have anything to say as regards problems with transportation in my area.
And that's because I couldn't really think of any issues with public transportation around where I live, but that has changed now. I stay around the centre of the city, which means the roads are relatively good and motorable. Also, the transportation fares are quite cheap, and it's funny how I didn't even realize it was cheap until I went to another State (I will get to that story shortly). So, what changed now? The problem with transportation in my area right now is the same way that's also affecting most parts of the country and that is the high cost of petrol/fuel scarcity.
Yes, it's a 2-in-1 problem. Nigerians have been battling with high cost of petrol which started getting worse when the current president assumed power, and now it has been crazy these past few weeks. The worst part is that even though it is expensive, it is still quite difficult to get which only makes it get more expensive because of the activities of black marketers and hoarders. Yesterday, my mom came back from work and said that the transportation fee in most parts of the city has been increased by over 60%, another side effect of the current fuel scarcity.
The fuel scarcity isn't as bad in my city as compared to other big cities like Lagos and Abuja, especially the overpopulated Lagos. I earlier stated that I underappreciated the transportation system in my city until I visited another city and two of such cities are Ajah and Lekki in Lagos state. I did my industrial training (IT) in Lagos back in 2022 and my stay over there remains the worst I have experienced in any city. Everyone (especially Lagosians) always talks about how Lagos is the next best thing after sliced bread but nobody will tell you how crazy the transportation system is over there.
I had to always leave my house as early as 5 AM every day just so I could beat traffic and get to work early. And the worst part is that when I'm on the road by 5 AM, I can see school buses filled with kids on the road by that same time, on their way to school, that's beyond crazy. Despite always leaving the house around 5 AM, I still get to work by 8 AM, that's about 3 hours, meanwhile, if it was in my city, that same journey wouldn't take up to an hour. There was a day I spent over 5 hours on the road, stuck from one traffic to another, I felt like crying that day.
I haven't even mentioned how I had to ride on the back of a truck on one unfortunate day, after waiting for a bus at a bus stop at Lekki for several hours but there were no buses because most of them couldn't get petrol for their vehicles (there was fuel scarcity back then). All these transportation problems I mentioned, I have never experienced any of them until I went to Lagos. I have been staying in Benin for most of my life (stayed in some other cities for a while too) but I have never been stuck in traffic for hours. We do get heavy traffic here sometimes, especially when it rains heavily but it's not a total gridlock where you will be stuck in one place for over an hour.
The times I have had problems with transportation in my city was when it rained heavily, especially when I was still in the university. There is one aspect of the road that's on the route to the university that is bad and gets heavily flooded when it rains, so vehicles are extra careful when passing there, which causes heavy traffic but at least the vehicles are still moving, albeit slowly. meanwhile, in Lagos, it won't rain but yet there will be mad traffic. And sometimes you will get to the head of the traffic jam and realize it's two idiots fighting in the middle of the road that was causing it and sometimes you won't even see what caused it because you will get to the front and see it's free, but vehicles are still stuck behind.
So, to sum it up, the current major issue with transportation around where I live is the increase in transportation costs which to me is even still cheaper when compared to some places like Lagos (oh, I didn't mention the fees are crazily expensive there?) and also feel scarcity, but that's a general problem all over the country. The roads here are good, although certain parts of the city have bad roads, but those are not around where I live and I haven't been to those places. Living in Lagos made me realize that Benin City is still a sane place to live because of how good the transportation is over here, although you can't compare both cities in terms of business opportunities and investments. Anyway, I have heard that Lagos mainland is better than the island (where I stayed) in terms of traffic, so maybe I will visit there when next I'm in Lagos.
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