On April 28, one of Nigeria’s leading international luxury bus operators, ABC Transport Plc will be 25. Its Managing Director, Mr. Frank Nnaji speaks with CHINYERE ELIZABETH OKOROAFOR on his challenges, why he is operating on the West African Coast, the potential for stimulating tourism in the Southeast, travel insurance and attractions of night travels, among others.
As the pioneer of the second generation of transporters in the Southeast, what is the motivating factor behind your business model?
Transportation provides for effective interaction for social and commercial connections. It is a very important component of human activities, despite the growth in technology. Before ABC came on board in 1993, a lot was taken for granted by people travelling. What we did was to change the narrative through improving the way we travel. We achieved this by placing more emphasis on safety and comfort. Truly speaking, we can say that transportation in Nigeria can be divided into two segments: the days before ABC and the ABC days. Some of the present generations don’t know what people encountered travelling in the 90s. Now, there is a new revolution, which we initiated. Nobody will expect anything less with our standards. Other companies are beginning to improve in terms of standards and we led this revolution in the 1990s.
What model did you adopt to achieve this, or you simply wanted to change the face of road transport in the country?
I am an entrepreneur who searches for better ways of doing things and creating values. The concepts I introduced were as a result of disappointments, that I had during travelling. Therefore, over time, we thought of how to improve the seeming challenges faced and add value. The belief was that if we add value, we will create more markets. Transportation was not my first business. I was into supply of educational materials for a company known as Rapido.
Transportation business came later with ABC and it blossomed. People caught up with the industry and it became a big business. When we opened the West Africa Coast route in 2004, something spectacular happened and many people didn’t realise that it wasn’t as easy to move from Nigeria to Ghana. It was difficult crossing the border and harmonising things. But, we were able to open up the gateway across the West Coast to encourage tourism across the axis. Incidentally, this has favoured Ghana than Nigeria because more people go to Ghana for tourism than from any other countries in the West Coast.
Therefore, it took quite a lot of work to unlock the West Coast gateway using the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC). Also, the work was facilitated by the Economic Community of WestAfrica States (ECOWAS) Secretariat. In fact, we had to carry everybody along to open up that corridor.
By April 28, ABC will be 25. What has kept the company going?
First,what has kept us going is that we set out to create value and we are doing something we are interested in. We didn’t get into transportation to make money. Therefore, when you aredoing something that you have particular interest in, you seem to drive it better.
For me, it was fun that I was developing things that people were appreciating, so that kept me going. Also, remember that I said that our focus is comfort and safety.
We have continued to work at achieving safety and comfort in our service delivery, and this is aimed at making people patronise us. We have also brought in a lot of innovations, such as seat spacing, better safety appreciation, on board insurance, entertainment and others.
How can the government key into this to promote tourism?
For you to promote tourism, it has to be a deliberate effort. It does not happen by accident.The government has to get people who understand this sector through engagement and think of how to develop it. Tourism development has to be prepared for, it is not something you rush into. For instance, in Owerri, there are many hotels, but just having hotels is one thing,the other thing is having things that will make it attractive to people and encourage them to visit the city. For the government to promote tourism, it needs to set up a clear-cut blueprint on what it wants to achieve.
How critical is road transportation to tourism growth?
First of all, if you take a sector that is informal and try to make it formal, it becomes a bit easy for everybody. What you will realise is that if you want to go from Nigeria to Kenya, you go through six borders (from Nigeria into Benin, Benin to Togo, Togo to Ghana). There are bottlenecks. From Lagos to Accra is like from Lagos to Onitsha in terms of distance, therefore you realise that the challenges are just at the borders. Now, the question is: how do you remove these bottlenecks? First of all, you have to consider if the Immigration officers across the Benin, Ghana and Togo borders understand what the ECOWAS Treaty for free movement provides and the truth is that they don’t.
This was why we went there to unlock the axis by first going to the ECOWAS Secretariat to pick the treaty, which makes all the countries in West Africa one mega country for free movement for trade (ECOWAS trade liberalisation scheme). At a point we had to get a letter from the Secretariat to the tourism unit of Lome and Accra to let them know that for this corridor, this is the way it is supposed to run.
Again, we had to address the issue of language barrier by recruiting bilingual crew members. If you come to ABC, you will find that they speak English and French. So, getting into the borders and communicating was easy. We do quite a lot of things to ensure that there is hitch-free trade and movement. And over time immigration officers learnt that when people go through the border they are not doing them any favour because it is provided in the ECOWAS Treaty.
What are the challenges ?
The government has not repaired the roads the way they ought to be. We have not been able to get the best with road development, especially when you merge it with population growth.Therefore, our roads are still below par and this exposes people to risk of accidents, damage to vehicle. In Nigeria, there are lots of harassments on the road with police checkpoints for no reason. If you move from Lagos to Owerri, you will encounter more than 15 police checkpoints.
One thing about modern travel is that it has to be predictable. If you are going from one location to another, the time you specify for such trip should be it. You realise that the many checkpoints, the bad roads are a fall out of the security situations in the country. Another challenge is the appreciation of the average Nigerian as to what the importance of tourism is. Many people don’t understand the importance of tourism. For instance in Ghana, when they decided that they wanted to develop their tourism, everybody was carried along.
There is a need to encourage people and invite them to be part of tourism development in the country, by creating things that will make them come, people will not come. Many countries are thriving best on tourism.
Is night travelling still attractive?
When we started operation in the 90s, we realised that the volume of traffic at night was as high as 30 percent. There was a time night travel was booming. There was also a time we introduced the sleeper service. We had our super sleeper and executive sleeper.There was a climber seat where you can sleep in the bus. We stopped at the Benin transit and people were served coffee. Then, security was assured until the late 2000 when armed robbers started to attack buses on the highway. At present, we still do night travels, but it is skeletal. We use night travel for the delivery of mails. But, generally, night travel is the bench mark even among airline operators. Before now, the roads were better and the traffic was not very high. What has happened is that traffic has increased and the road development cannot cope with the pace of traffic. Therefore, road development supposed to be going at the same rate with population growth and traffic development. Generally, we have not done well as a country, especially in the transportation sector.
Has ABC incurred any major loss to claims from travel insurance?
We ensure that whatever you pay for our ticket, there is a component of it that comes to personal insurance against injury or any fatality and the vehicle itself. When we talk about accident or fatality, it doesn’t really has to be your fault at times.Transportation in Nigeria has become very informal and has become an all-comers affair.
The standards are not maintained. In some other climes, you have to go through protocols,understand the rules and meet certain standards. Overtime, we have done a lotof advocacy in the sector, we look good and the other operators don’t look good, there is no way there will development. So, we advocated what is known as road transport standardisation scheme, whereby any operator that has a fleet of five vehicles is regarded as a fleet operator. Then certain standards are set for the person to operate. We also led the setting up of speed limit of vehicles. We were instrumental to the setting of Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA).
What is the potential for stimulating tourism in this axis?
As I said, the development of tourism is adeliberate effortand it is not going to happen by accident. Onour part asindividuals, the much we can do is advocacy. There are different regulations and rules, which only the government can do. If there is a site,there should be a government who can take ownership that site, develop it and engage thecommunity.
For instance, we have a blue lake known as the Oguta Lake. It used to be a beautiful lake, you realise that it has been neglected. The government has to put money in infrastructure. There should be a travel bureau that will hire knowledgeable hands in the sector to carry along the people.
In most of the hotels, the problem is not the building, but the number of staff. If you attract people, they would like to stay and the standard would be upgraded. So, you find that if you have a tourism bureau to take care of these things, you make a calendar that will make people come to your city and build facilities that can hold large conferences. Luckily, we have an airport, and also it is as if we are in a confluence.In terms of positioning, Owerri is well-positioned. Talking about what we do to promote tourism, Imo State has the least to do. What we can do at this stage is advocacy.
The government must have aspecific goal to develop tourism and I think it is something to consider very seriously as job creation will make the city more popular.