Operations research is one scientific methodology that is not so quite evidenced in Nigeria’s economic planning but which ought to be considered for application given the country’s advanced age of 65. This is because if the government sincerely and patriotically means to move the nation’s economy to an enviable global height, this is a useful approach to integrate into its planning.
For instance, to efficiently manage this economy to actualize potent results, policy makers, planners, and executors of the nation’s economic policies have to come to terms with genuine implementation of the policy guidelines specifically programmed for the transportation sector, in a selfless manner. Politicizing every bit of the national assignments on the basis of ethnic, religious, tribal, regional, lingual, and other social divides, pays the entire nation no good. The citizens should therefore rise above board and every parochial pettiness that holds this economy from achieving the expected national economic efficiency. These issues as discussed herein and their expected true performance outcomes are not rocket science.
What this country sincerely needs at this critical age of her national life is to professionally break down all problems of transportation for everyday life implementation, with the application of quantitative methods in analyzing modes and movement of goods and services (inclusive of inward and outward bounds of the national borders, as captured in factual records of undisputable collected data). This suggested operations research strategy makes use of advanced analytical, mathematical, and modeling techniques that will enable the effective management of both domestic economic and commercial activities (with informed decision in solving complex problems that have retarded the nation’s economic growth in the past decades, as practically and realistically witnessed within the economy); leading to constructing the right transportation models that shall provide optimal economic results. This shall be conducted as it suits the four major modes of transportation of water, air, rail, and road. The advocated transportation model is (a simulated linear programming problem) designed to determine the most efficient way to ship goods from a set of supply sources to a set of demand destinations within the country, to minimize total logistics costs, while actualizing the desired outcomes in the face of supply and demand constraints (in other words, the calculated feasible solution for a transportation problem).
Sadly, in practical terms, Nigeria has experienced huge economic losses, and has been faced with numerous forms of transportation problems, which have obviously kept the economy of this country from reaching the expected level of economic growth. Apart from movement of goods or commodities of diverse forms (within and outside the country), transportation also captures movement of people and animals from one location to another, using various means. For economic and commercial purposes, transportation modes and methods include rail ways, pipelines, water ways, roads and air transports. Appreciating the fact that transportation plays a crucial role in economic development by facilitating trade amongst business operators, connecting communities, as access to resources are equally provided, the systems processes involve vehicles, movement operations that utilize diverse kinds of infrastructure (air ports, sea ports, rail lines, network of roads). The nation’s transportation sector is profoundly dominated by private operators and entrepreneurs through road transportation that handles, significantly, most freight services and passenger movement; with little or insignificant investment proportion of government stake in this vital service sector.
Poor infrastructure, high cost of transportation of mercantile goods within the country, and security issues are the critical setbacks that bedevil the nation’s economy. The Economic Summit Group may wish to consider and deliberate on this strategic approach of growing this economy, if it hasn’t already done so. The government should be fair and consider equitable distribution of infrastructural facilities, with a justifiable spread within the country. A very classical example is the government’s inability to have developed a functional sea port within the South East geopolitical zone; especially when the zone has an existing potential location with the deepest undeveloped sea port (in terms of nautical miles, compared to others in the country) at Ose Akwa near Mgbidi in Imo state. Strategic investments in rail and water transport should be explored in and around the South Eastern region of the country. The reason is that an existence of standard gauge rail lines within the South East geopolitical zone shall reduce the pressure of heavy loads on the nation’s road networks that are frequently damaged and are also not given adequate and sustainable maintenance based on maintenance costs that gulp billions of naira.
This negative impact on the economy, orchestrated by the identified unreasonable logistic problems with long stretch of haulage routes, for thousands and millions of containerised goods imported into the country that are cleared through the Apapa, Tincan, Onne functional sea ports but, eventually find their ways to Aba and Onitsha as their final destinations, needs to be checked and mitigated. The former managing director of National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), George Moghalu, said that “over 60 – 65 percent of containerized cargo that arrive Lagos today end up in Onitsha and Aba”; with a hypothesis taken of five million containers, subjecting undue stress on Nigerian roads with about ten million trailers. The federal government is therefore urged to do the needful in the transport sector, for the sake of the overall outlook of the national economy.
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