What Is The Role Of Road Transport In Nigeria?

Everything needed by man to survive can never be found in a single location because all the resources are never available in a particular location. This has made it a must to move from one place to another. Therefore, the variation in the resources endowment among cities and towns creates spatial and economic imbalance which necessitates ultimately interactions. There is need for interaction be it socially, economically and otherwise. Therefore, uneven distribution provides a fundamental basis of interaction. More so, urban centres are characterized by varying activities. These activities include; manufacturing, services of various forms, trading, transportation and other tertiary activities. These activities in urban centres have made people

It is regarded as the maker of cities (Ogunsanya, 2002). Therefore, urban centres and their transport systems are fully complementary. Among modes of transportation, road transportation is one of the means to bridge the gap between the place of abundance and place of scarcity. It is vital to economic development, trade and social integration especially in the developing nations. It is the most commonly used mode of transportation in Nigeria today (National Bureau of Statistics, 2014). The increasing population and poor economic situation as well as inadequate technology development generally in developing nations and Nigeria in particular make intra and intercity movement of people and goods rely heavily on the road transportation which is largely in the hand of the private sector (Oyesiku, 2002). Also, increase in the demand for inter-urban work, business and other trips are stimulating interaction among urban centres. In fact, due to continuous increased in inter-urban trips, majority of state governments are contributing to the number of buses available for inter-urban trips. Nigeria has the largest road network in West Africa and second largest South of the Sahara. Road transportation account for 94% of transport system in Nigeria. (FRSC, 2011; Innocent, 2011). Therefore, road transport is the major means of inter-urban movement of passengers and goods in Nigeria. For instance, between 1999 and 2005, all the government owned mass transit bus systems in the city of Enugu withdrew their intra-urban transport services and concentrated on inter-urban transport services (Ali, 2010). More so, inter-urban trips are encouraged due to the increased in disposable income of the people which in turn increased vehicle ownership and automatically increased the availability of vehicles for long distance movement as well as improved transport infrastructure (Agbonkhese et al.,