Primary indicators to assess inclusiveness by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute
(i) Availability
(ii) Accessibility
(iii) Affordability
(iv) Acceptability.
Tweaking Private Transport Business Model for Greater Women Participation
Using the Air and Road transportation by the National Bureau of Statistics, the involvement of the private sector forms the bulk of the operations in the sector. In vehicle population data. vehicles used for commercial purposes, which are owned and operated by private organizations, forms 53.8% of the total vehicles on Nigeria roads. This spectacular statistics is expected to be higher for the aviation industry as plans to resuscitate the national carrier is still being made, this translates to the domination of private actors in the Nigerian aviation sector.
The commercial road transportation business in Nigeria forms an exceptional business entity with little or non-participation room for women. The traditional businesses operators with the new disruptive businesses (UBER and TAXIFY), still record few participation from women as drivers.
The informal sector which has the capacity of engaging almost 60% of the total working group in developing countries, has been identified to pose a significant bias towards women participation due to several factors including difficulty in accessing credit facilities. A significantly low rate was recorded for women’s participation in transportation service, this represents a significant bias towards women in engagements in this sector as well as under-utilization of potentials in the country as a significant portion of her female population are under-employed or unemployed.
According toe the World Bank's estimate in 2015 Women form 49.07% of the total Nigeria population. The under-utilization of these abundant human resources and capacity due to dysfunctional planning system represents an efficiency gap that should and must be closed to facilitate the country’s dream of joining the one of the 20 most advanced economies by 2020.