Africa: Follow the Master Plan and Re-elect Obasanjo, says Nigeria’s Transport Minister

13 March 2003
allAfrica.com
By Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

Abuja — After 3 days of deliberations in the Nigerian federal capital, Abuja, the first African Ministerial Forum on Integrated Transportation (Amfit) ended a three-day conference on Thursday. Amfit was inspired by an international symposium on transport held in the United States in 2000. The objectives were to develop a blueprint for transport infrastructure in Africa "within the context of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad)" and "to attract the necessary capital and investment inflows that are critical to transport infrastructure development in Africa".

African transport ministers and heads of delegations, other government and private sector participants from in and outside the continent, as well as observers, held open and closed sessions in Abuja with the objective reaching conclusions and proposing recommendations to be passed onto Nepad.

Co-chairing the forum, with Senegal, was Nigeria’s Transport Minister, Ojo Maduekwe. After the Amfit conference, he spoke to allAfrica.com’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, with additional questions from Nigerian state television, NTA.

Minister Maduekwe, the first African Ministerial Forum on Integrated Transportation (Amfit) held in Abuja is now over, the final communiqué has been read, what happens next?

Next implementation, implementation, implementation.

How soon will we begin to see this?

Yesterday.

What were the high points of your meeting?

It’s exciting. For me, this is my finest moment over the past three years in this job. It’s a dream I’ve always had. It’s a vision I’ve been passionate about. Now I feel we can move, in fact not just move, we can fly, because we have not only a national consensus, but we also have a continental consensus - I would even say an international consensus. And that is that transportation is a fundamental base for fighting poverty on the continent, for creating wealth, for uniting our people and, indeed, for creating modern states.

Some of the participants, who came to Amfit from other parts of Africa, had to leave the continent to get to Nigeria - a point you noted in your closing remarks.

It is outrageous. As a matter of fact, much of the inspiration for this conference arose from that frustration. And we are grateful to our European friends and to our American friends for creating platforms for us to meet in their countries.

But I ask myself - we go to Europe and we go to America and our well-meaning friends and partners tell us about how to develop Africa. But we, the African ministers, are not even talking to each other. We go to Washington to meet for the first time, we go to London to meet for the first time. We listen to great speeches and come back to Africa, but nothing is happening.

I therefore felt that there was need for us to start talking to each other on African soil, on an African platform, because our problems are similar. Once we do that, then we can create the enormous political will that can bring about the critical mass that can get the engine of development off the track.

But how do you harmonise these lofty ideas and get them on track?

My conclusions are that we are the poorest continent in the world - which is Africa - and yet we are potentially the most wealthy continent in the world. I hope we will move more rapidly out of poverty through adequate transportation infrastructure, because transportation provides and promotes trade and development. Transportation provides access to education, to healthcare and to all the dividends of development.

Without transportation, it is difficult - in fact it’s impossible - for Africa to unite for progress.

And yet if you look at the continent of Africa, the state of transportation and transportation services are lamentable.

Because we have been doing it individually. We have been fighting separately, as separate countries. We have not made use of the resources of size, the resources of our economies and the resources of our experience to pool our energies together and develop the continent.

And as long as we stay on that track of individual efforts, purely on a national level, we will be very slow in moving out of the poverty trap, assuming we ever move out of it. Therefore, the solution is continental integration. And it is based on that notion that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) has now been put in place as a result of the collective genius of our leaders.

Nepad at the end of the day is about integration. And integration is most viable through transportation. Because, without transportation, you cannot have integration.

So do you see Amfit, the African Ministerial Forum on Integrated Transportation, becoming the new 'transport wing’ of Nepad and how would that work?

Very well put. The transport platform, the transport lobby, the transport mechanism for evolving continental transportation policies for Africa.

Let’s talk specifically about the example of Nigeria. I haven’t visited for a little while and I’m happy to say that on arrival at Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos en route here to Abuja, I was amazed to see that the whole place has been cleaned up, upgraded and transformed. The nightmare and dread, in the past, of arriving in Lagos have disappeared. Congratulations! I suppose that’s under your watch.

We, at the Ministry of Transport still have policy responsibility in the overall transportation sector, so we cannot be oblivious to the progress that is being made at the airports. But we must not take the credit at the Ministry of Transport for the wonderful job that has taken place at the airports. That work has been put together and effected through the specific ministry that has that responsibility, namely the Ministry of Aviation.

We used to have one Ministry of Transport that encompassed all the modes, including rail, maritime, inland waterways and aviation. But because of the critical and urgent needs of faster development of the various modes and the particularly vital role of aviation in bringing about faster movement of goods and services, and the technological nature of aviation, there was a need to put a special emphasis, a more targeted emphasis, on having a specific ministry to deal with aviation.

Well it may have been a pleasure to arrive at the international airport in Lagos, but the same can’t be said for road transport, which is your responsibility.The roads are a mess. Hardly a day goes by without reports of road accidents in Nigeria.

You are absolutely right. Sadly you are right and I cannot dispute what you have said. And that deepens the level of challenge and the extreme sense of urgency with which we can tackle these matters.

And then of course, there is the woeful public transportation system in Nigeria which is, after all, Africa’s most populous nation; as your country’s transport minister, what are you doing about it?

My duty as Minister of Transport is to evolve policies. It is policies that create infrastructures. Without the policies, you cannot even begin to create infrastructures. Or if you attempt to create infrastructures, you will end up with a mess, with abandoned projects and not with transportation, but with gridlock and a pretence towards solving the problems.

But there is already a mess and gridlock in Lagos, with bottlenecks and traffic jams all the time!

Because the policy has not been there. This is the first time we are having a transportation master plan. It’s the first time in the history of Nigeria. I did it. This is the first time. If we had had a transportation master plan, that gridlock would not be there, because the master plan would scream "you can’t do this! If you do this wrong, you are going to end up with this problem next year, in five years and ten years later." This would be the cost of doing it wrong, and this would be the benefit of doing it well,

But practically-speaking, how will your master plan work, say, for Lagosians stuck in traffic for hours on end?

Because we never had a master plan before, that is why we are in a mess. Now we have a master plan, it tells you what to do every year for the next twenty years. It tells you how much it will cost you to do it, it tells you how to do it and when to do it and how to source the money for doing it. The picture is going to be different.

Practically, when can we expect to see the trickle-down? Practically, when will the vision of your master plan be implemented because, for now, the 'go-slows’ and 'hold ups’ in Lagos continue -

I say, when a plan for a big hotel like this one we’re in is being designed, when shall we see the building? Somebody could say, "ah, it’s just a drawing, the building hasn’t taken place." Without a drawing, you cannot have a great building like this. And a drawing can consume a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of talent, a lot of genius. Because, that is the hardest part - the drawing of a big infrastructure project like this building.

So, are you saying Nigerians have got to wait for 20 years for the end of the traffic go-slows in Lagos?!

Once you’ve got the building, two months later you’ll see the builders laying the foundation. Six months after, the piling is going on and one day the building is over. I don’t know what you have in mind, but I know that we have taken the most important step, which is to have the transport master plan.

Now if this master plan is religiously adhered to, and that means finding the necessary funding - because these things don’t just fly out of the head, there has to be funding for it...

Do you have the necessary budget?

The master plan first, the budget later! It is the master plan that will make the Ministry of Finance look at the allocation of resources in a more strategic manner. Now, if they didn’t have this master plan, then the allocation to the Transport Ministry would be purely by rule of thumb. And that is not good enough!

That is why we need a master plan. Next year for instance, which I think is the most operational year for the effective take-up of the master plan, we expect that the budgetary allocation for transportation will be more economically strategic. Again, it has to be revenue-based. You can’t spend the money you don’t have. If you don’t have the money, if your revenue is shrinking, if you are depending only on oil and are unable to diversify, the master plan may have serious problems.

So, all this is linked again to the economy. And, of course, the economy itself will not be able to move unless you are able to have adequate transportation.

So, it’s the egg or chicken thing. And it is the duty of political leadership to break the vicious circle. That is what I have done by making this major intervention through a master plan.

So Minister Maduekwe, bottom line, when should the people of Lagos and those visiting who get caught up in the traffic snarl-ups, expect them to end?

They should support the government that has put in place this master plan, that is the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, to have the next four years, a second four year term, to now roll the master plan off the track.

My promise and pledge, on behalf of the president of the federal republic, is that by the end of the second term, Nigeria will be a different place - in Lagos, in Bauchi, in Aba, in Port Harcourt - in terms of transportation, because the master plan will have had four years of implementation.

That sounds like electioneering! And what about the woeful public transportation? What are your plans?

The plans are all in the master plan. Everything is in the master plan. It is the bible of transportation. And once we keep to it, we will experience the joy, the blessing of such an important document. But if we keep away from it, we are in trouble.

The importance of the master plan is like the master plan for the federal capital, Abuja. When we moved away from it, we ended up having ghettoes, even in the new city.

And no proper public transportation, sir.

Now this government came into power and brought the master plan of Abuja back.. That is why you are beginning to have some improvements. The beauty of a master plan is that, if you run away from it, you will get the punishment immediately! If you go back to it, then there will be progress!

The only solution to not implementing a master plan is to go and do another one. And when you do another master plan, you will come back with the same kind of plan you are rejecting, because the expertise in this area shares the same vision, the same the concept, the same tools.

Why wasn’t public transportation built into the master plan for the federal capital, Abuja? Why don’t we see adequate public transportation on the roads?

You mean once we did the master plan, you expect to see public transportation within months?! You have to spend money on that. You don’t mean that the master plan will create public transportation within months?! (Laughs). This is not magic!

Minister, it appears that your answer to all my questions is "follow the master plan"!

That’s all. Follow the master plan, elect good government, allow President Obasanjo a second term, so that he can roll this thing off the track.

You’re electioneering again!

Right now, what we have - this is a campaign period anyway, so it’s quite in order - another four years of Obasanjo will see the full effective take-off of the master plan in a way that will be irreversible. And then we will get to the promised land, eventually, by following the master plan.

If you get another leader and another party, they will tell you rubbish, throw away the master plan and we will go back to square zero, or less!

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