• Liyel Imoke

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Since the Donald Duke administration, tourism took the front seat in government affairs in Cross River State. With thousands of visitors trouping to Calabar, the first capital of Nigeria commonly, referred to as the peoples’ paradise annually, and beyond, the state has witnessed the socio-economic pressure usually associated with tourism sites worldwide. Transportation facilities and hotels have recorded high patronage.

peak of this socio-economic burden however is the month-long December holiday declared compulsorily for civil servants in the state since the days of Donald Duke and which the Liyel Imoke administration has pledged to sustain.

During this period, a carnival is staged at the U.J. Esuene stadium after parading the streets of the state capital. Wild life parks, the Obudu cattle ranch and other tourists sites are visited for fun and relaxation. But all these are hinged on transportation. In this interview, the Special Adviser to Governor Imoke on transportation, Mr. Gab Okulaja discusses the challenges of his office and measures to cope with the influx of tourists to the state.
Cross River State being a mega-tourist destination in Nigeria, how do you cope with the challenges of transportation for tourists?

It’s been challenging I would say, in the sense that when you have nothing to fall back on, you are faced with enormous challenges because you have to come up with design, the vision and all that so it’s a huge challenge but we’ve been able to weather it in the last one year and I think to the glory of God, we now have a framework, at least, something to stand on; something we can show for and something we can look forward to.

For a first time visitor to Calabar, it is noticed that commercial motorcyclists use crash helmets unlike in other cities in Nigeria, how do you impact on them to get this result?
This was started in 2007 by the immediate past governor, Donald Duke. It came as part of the need for us to enthrone some discipline and regulation in the public transportation business in the state. You see the unruly nature of these motorcyclists. In as much as it is not the ideal transportation for an urban city, there was need, given the turn of events, to at least, put some form of regulation behind it so that it ensures that the citizen are getting some benefit of government regulation in that sector.

So that came about Donald Duke’s regime. We thought, well, if these people have taken to this form of transportation and people are getting used to it, there was need to put some authority and finesse behind it so that you would know who a commercial motorcyclist is and we’ll also have some dos and don’ts for them and also, the citizens will be able to say, these are my rights if I have to take this form of transportation. That’s how it came about and we are happy that we may have been a trail-blazer in the country and we are grateful to God for that.

When you come into Calabar, somehow you are circumstantially forced to use a motorbike because there are no taxis, though there is a bus system, what are you doing to give people option?
There is a bank that is backing us in our taxi project. If you read through His Excellency’s one year address, he did mention that we were strategizing our public transportation and especially the taxi business and we were now leaving it in the hands of the private sector to thrive.

All we were trying to do was stay at the background and provide the enabling environment for the private sector to do what it is supposed to do like you have in other economies. So what we’ve done, we are hoping that very soon, you will see. We have come up with guidelines for the operations of the taxi business in the state and it needs a lot of stakeholder buying in the sense that we got the taxi drivers themselves who are the ones who benefit directly from the system.

So we got them into some working and talking relationship with us and acting in concert with them, we have been able to come out with something that we think is sustainable. If you recall, we had the intervention of the first list where government came out with few vehicles purchased by government and then given out to members of the public to utilize for taxi business.

That appeared not to have worked because people looked at it as one of those government largesse things and did not look at it from the business concept of it and that appears to be fizzling out. So we thought we should look at that and see where we made mistakes and correct ourselves. That is what we are now addressing with the taxi drivers.

We find out that it is better to get the man who does that business and believes in it to be the one to drive it. So, what we did was to go back to the drawing board and from there, we found out that we must apply the bottoms up approach. From then, we may be able to get what they require to stay afloat in that business and be more visible in the business. To that extent, what we are coming out now with is a franchise arrangement where we would franchise the taxi business just like we have done for the motorcycle business and then they will become the operators of the taxi business so we won’t have an all comers affair. You will have about two or three operators.

We are looking at four operators, each of them owning about 50 taxis in their fleet. Any other person who is a driver and wants to operate still remain a taxi operator would now go and register under them and be regulated by our laws. We have certain laws we’ve come up with. Basically, we want to see the same things that you see abroad – each taxi must carry a meter, communication system, have a display on his roof with the phone number and then display the normal guidelines that you see behind a seat which allows you to understand what your rights are.

So what really happened to the experimental taxi cabs of the Duke administration- did they go as dividends of democracy?
No, they did not. Some of them are on the road. I see them and we are still monitoring them. In fact, recently, the Auditor General’s office and my office have sat together to reconcile account on that matter and the Auditor General’s office has had meetings with some of those operators thus ensuring that at least, they provide the service and continue the project the way it wasenvisaged but like I said, what we found out was that most of the beneficiaries were not taxi drivers.

Let them believe that they could be promoters of that endeavour. Where you have somebody who takes a vehicle and he can earn an income from it first, without paying back on the loan, wouldn’t allow ends meet. So this people were caught in some kind of culdesac.

They didn’t do their homework properly because they would have known that it is not something that you get as an entrepreneur and you want to give it to somebody to first of all, give you something to eat from before paying back on the loan. So, a lot of them got themselves caught in that and that is why the project is suffering. They should have done a little bit of homework and gone straight to the taxi drivers. That’s what we noticed and it’s correction we are trying to make with this project. Now we are dealing with the taxi drivers directly.
The system you are coming with is something that is done in more developed countries, is there any component for training those who are going to operate it?

Like I said, there are guidelines for the operators. First and foremost, you must understand that a taxi driver is like your front desk manager. He is the image of the city; he is the image of your state. So conscious of that, one of the first things they have to do is go through some training that has to do with service and courtesies, apart from ensuring that when you come for the training, they look at your competence in driving and all those kinds of things.

There are other things that you have to go through like street knowledge programme. They have to know the city. They have to know governance – who is in government? They have to know places and all those kinds of things. There is a curriculum that all of them have to go through before we give them an operator’s licence and they also have to know how to use the communication system.

The operation of commercial motorcyclists in Calabar is banned after 9 pm in Calabar town but some of them still operate even upto midnight, how are you effecting compliance?
It is not something government really feels good about. His Excellency, Liyel Imoke has always been against that but it has come to a stage where we have to balance the security of the citizens against the activities of some unscrupulous ones and that’s why that came out.
It is observed that policemen arrest these cyclists before it is 9 pm and molest them, are you aware of this and what do you do if this kind of complaint comes to you?

I think I’ve observed that myself. I noticed the enforcement of the order starts before 9 o’clock. I will drive out again tonight. If I observe it for one week, I will find that out through my state security adviser who has a direct relationship with the security forces. We work through him on security matters. I thank you for the observation. I will pass it unto him. Just give me a week.
If under the one week of your incubation, one million motorcycles are impounded and two million Nigerians are maimed, what will you do?

We won’t let it happen. I’ve noted your complaints and I’m going to take it up today. For our own tourism initiative, you know we have December, which is a one month activity of arts. It comes with its challenges in the area of transportation, so we are conscious of that and not only that, we’ve also come up with a couple of guidelines and regulations.

The last one year has been challenging. We didn’t have a framework; we didn’t have a backbone so we sat back in the last one year to do some work that has to do a few things like providing informatory and directional signs on our routes. We are going to provide street and locational maps, which in December, we should be able to handout as you arrive at the airport.

And we are hoping to get an information desk at the airport so that as soon as you come in from the plane, you now see information desk display of taxi, routes and the rates and so on these are some of the things we are looking at in the immediate. We are talking about the rates and tourists maps.

Definitely, we will have copies for you in December when you come and now that we have the taxis, we are looking at if we can have some bus shelters; not everywhere though. We can get about 50 within some visible routes and then just enhance our bus system. As you know, we are not really proud of the bus system yet because it is not there. What we did was that we just reacted to a situation at the time and then rolled out some buses. We intend to have an efficient system, a world-class system. It is going to be expensive.