The Federal Government’s plan to establish a Transportation University has generated mixed reactions among teachers, experts and industry stakeholders, ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE writes.
The Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, which will mark its first 100 days in office on Thursday, may soon flag-off a landmark project – a University of Transportation.
It would be the first specialised institution of its kind, aimed at developing human capital, capable of driving through research, the various transportation interventions being introduced by the administration.
Transportation Minister Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, who made this known penultimate Friday, said the ground-breaking of the university would take place this month, in Daura, Katsina State.
The university project is one of the requests from the Chinese government aimed at boosting Nigeria’s capacity to train the manpower required to sustain the ongoing transformation in the sector.
It would be the nation’s premier tertiary institution for training transport professionals since independence. It is coming 99 years after the International University of Logistics and Transportation (IULT) was founded in Poland, and over 70 years of a similar varsity in Moscow, Russia.
Expected to draw inspiration from across the globe, where similar institutions had been established, the university would address manpower training, research and policy, which had been obtained offshore, especially in China.
According to Amaechi, 150 Nigerians are slated for scholarships in all parts of Transportation Studies in China. While the first set of 60 left in 2016, another set of 60 is expected to proceed next year; the last set would follow later. On their return, they are expected to boost the industry, especially the railway tracks and rolling stocks.
Since Nigeria’s independence, the transportation sector has remained the most neglected, despite the demand for experts to manage it.
The only institution that held sway in the sector, until lately, was the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technology (NITT), established in the 50s by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), to train its workforce on railway operations.
The institute was taken over by the Ministry of Transportation, when the railway bankrupted. But the intervention had not impact the sector, as the institute since inception, has remained a mere appendage and not recognised beyond awarding diploma certificates for short-term courses on transportation, especially rail systems and logistics.
Transportation studies, in the main, have remained a mere appendage of either departments of Geography or Urban and Regional Planning in many of the recognised federal and state universities across the country.
That was the story until 2008, when the Lagos State University (LASU) elevated Transportation Studies by establishing a School of Transportation Studies (LASU-SOT), the first, not only in Nigeria, but also in Southern Africa. A similar faculty of transportation existed only in Cairo, Egypt.
Experts said, if properly nurtured, the project could be the catalyst for the growth and professionalisation of the sector.
The absence of requisite skills in transportation education, transportation engineering and technology, transportation economics, and other critical adjuncts, have been described as the bane of the economic gloom.
A transportation and logistics expert, who is also the Director Safety Without Borders (SWB), Mr Patrick Adenusi, blamed the dearth of professionals on gross and misconceptions about transportation.
For instance, while Amaechi was excited about the institution, which he enthused, would change the narrative of the sector, critics expressed concern about the need for another specialised institution.
Though a don with the Ogun State University, Ago Iwoye, is non-pulsed that the university might not be at any cost to the nation, anothr queried the new varsity’s site at Daura, the President’s hometown.
But they all agreed that the absence of training centres had continued to give rise to the preponderance of touts and quacks whose invasion of the road mode have continued to make a mess of the government’s intervention in terms of provision of rolling stocks aimed at shifting attention to public sector transportation.
The almost total dominance of the road mode by touts, and transport unions agents, popularly called agberos, has continued to tar transportation with the mud of ignominy and this is despite that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) captured the road sub-sector as responsible for 98 percent of the nation’s travel needs.
Adenusi urged the handlers of the project to collaborate with the LASU-SOT to develop competent professionals who would be able to hold their own in any field of transportation and logistics.
“It is also envisaged that the project would not only raise professionals on road mode alone, but also encompass other modes of transportation – air, rail, water and perhaps, pipeline transportation,” he said.
For him, another major advantage is that the school will increase the capacity of public institutions to admit more young secondary school graduates, many of whom are often in the lurch yearly as stricter measures are released year after year to further restrict admission.
“Besides, products of the university would also be available to the world market, while Nigeria would be able to earn foreign exchange from foreign students who would come to acquire special skills relating to the sector,’’ he said.
Adenusi agreed with proponents that the university bodes well for the country, as according to him, it would restore sanity to the sector.
A member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transportation (CILT), who would not want his name published, said the university would proffer solution to the endemic challenges bedeviling the sector.
A source at the NITT, Zaria, admitted the project was laudable. He, however, urged the government to prioritise its objectives, set achievable and measurable timelines, and ensure that the Chinese government or the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), does not turn the project into another white sepulchre.
The source, who did not want his name in print, said failure to do this could derail the project.
To succeed, the source said, the new university could copy the LASU-SOT template and expand into a full university curriculum. “The curriculum developers need to develop faculties and departments that meet local needs and relevant to the skills readily available in the market. If this is done, government would have prevented the project becoming a mere dumping ground for all expired ideologies and theories which are no longer relevant in the sector.
Nigeria’s foremost transportation teacher and an advocate of the project, Dr Tajudeen Bawa’Allah, said the government should handle the school over to professionals, who are passionate about the industry, adding that to do otherwise, would be akin to killing it.
Bawa’Allah, 78, the first LASU-SOT dean, praised the minister for the idea, which according to him, would give transportation studies a place of pride.
Bawa’Allah, who described transportation as the essence of life and human activity, including procreation, added that no activity is complete without transportation. He described those opposing the idea as ignorant of the pride of place transportation occupies in their lives.
He challenged the Federal Government to make a success of the dream in the interest of the coming generation. Citing, among others, the impact of the SOT, Bawa’Allah said among the first set of graduates produced by the school in 2013, seven would be completing their doctorates at various universities in the United States.
He said not only did former Governor Fashola give a building to the university, he also provided foreign scholarships to all graduating students, a practice he lamented was stopped by his successor.
LASUSOT has three departments, which could stand as take off points for six faculties for transportation university. These, according to him, are: Transport Management, Transport Logistics and Transport Infrastructure.
Others are Transport Technology, Transport Planning and Transport Policy.
The Transportation University would provide the opportunities for education, training and research in transportation related disciplines and industries that are lacking in the country’s niversities, such as Transport Economics, Transport Tunnels, Military Purpose Vehicles, Bridges, Ship building, Jetliner Engine Design and construction.
The list could be longer, he said, adding that the university would grow towards full complements of transportation.
He said the Chinese/Nigeria collaboration is heart-warming for a well-funded university, the cost implications not-withstanding.
He supported the siting of the varsity in Daura, saying being the link of the speed train to Niamey in Niger Republic, it would bring development to to the town, and that it would complement the National Railway Project being carried in conjunction with the Chinese government.
Training of our youths in China is being done under the Daura Project meant to serve generations of Nigerians.
