A former Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC); Dr. Kingsley Usoh, has accused political decisions by the government without consulting the necessary stakeholders as one of the reasons the Nigerian Railway died.
Usoro gave the explanation on Tuesday in Lagos at the 2018 Chattered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Impact Leadership.
He explained that people who were on ground to work were neglected in some certain key areas.
Usoro accused the government for adding problem to the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) by asking her to address the issue of congestion at the ports.
"We look at land transportation, roads and rail, why did the Nigerian railway die? Because of political decisions without consulting the experts who are on ground to do the job, that ended the Nigerian railways. And today, my beautiful daughter sitting here who is the MD of NPA is given the problem of solving this problem of ports congestion. The roads leading to the port is no longer working. But we caused it because we didn't take steps to get the real facts about things before we do them. We look at the river ports, we dredged them in the 80's during Shagari's time", he noted.
He however said that there are so many impediments in the nation's transport sector, even as he added that if the sector is properly harnessed, it has the capacity of employing many Nigerian youths.
He added that they are trying to ensure that these impediments are addressed as soon as possible.
"The problem we have in the transport sector is the fact that we have a lot of impediments on the roads and trying to jump all these problems and making sure that these problems are properly addressed. We have we look at the transport industry what is it that transportation can do for Nigeria"
Usoh advised that strategies should be put on ground to ensure that transportation sector changes the worth of the country.
"So what do we do as a people to ensure that we use transportation to change the worth of Nigerians? Like I said earlier transportation is a mass employer and if they are employed development will come in that will make us employ more hands than we are doing because we can absorb more"
He maintained that the sector can be changed in such a way that it will change the economy of the country.
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