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 