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Water buses to ease fuel subsidy loss in Nigeria
Getting the Nigerian population to trust historically unreliable water transport is a challenge which Eko Water Buses hopes to overcome to enable a modal shift from road transport to inland water transport
Festac W
ith a population of 15 million, Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, faces serious transportation challenges. Residential and
commercial areas are geographically separated and the struggle to travel between them forces much of the population into long commutes on overburdened road networks every day. One company is hoping to change this. Eko Water Buses (EWB) is looking to set up a new ferry service on Lagos Lagoon and other inland waterways in the area, as a pilot phase in the implementation of a national roll out. On 31 January 2006, Nigeria’s National Inland
Waterways Authority (NIWA), an arm of the Federal Ministry of Transport, hired Dutch consultants, Royal Haskoning, to carry out an Inland Waterways Transport (IWT) master plan and bankable feasibility report. The report was submitted to NIWA on 6 August 2010. Furthermore, NIWA was granted funds to acquire two 40-45-passenger fast ferries in January. However, recent events in the country have posed challenges for the project. The Nigerian government has subsidised oil prices since 1992 but spiralling costs (US$8 billion in 2011) led it to withdraw this on 1 January 2012. To calm protests over a petrol price hike from N65 (US$0.43) to N141 (US$0.87), the government rescinded its decision and set the petrol price at N97 (about US$0.60), while at the same time announcing palliatives that would be provided from the savings of the subsidy, especially for mass transportation operators. The palliatives fall into two broad categories:
the safety social net programme (urban mass transit scheme) and visible infrastructure projects. Among
28 I Passenger Ship Technology I Spring 2012 Mile 2
Satellite Town
Olodi Apapa 3 Mile 12 Ikorodu 1 Oworonsoki Oke Afa Badore IBB Iddo Ebute-Ero Liverpool
Falomo Marina
Lekki Lagos
West Line Central Line Apape Line
North Hopper Line Eko Water Buses’ proposed routes other things, these palliatives basically provide
government incentives to providers of urban mass transit services in the form of low interest loans, import duty waivers etc, targeted to bring down the cost of transportation caused by the subsidy removal of petrol. This
is where Eko Water Buses sees more
opportunity than challenges. Following the Royal Haskoning feasibility report, EWB is specifying a catamaran designed for 200 passengers. It will be 24m long, operating at between 21 and 22 knots fully loaded, at a draught of 0.8m. The company has contracted Aluminium Boats Australia to initially build a demonstrator, which is currently under construction in Brisbane and scheduled to begin service in the first quarter of 2012.
Muyiwa Omololu, the chief executive officer of
Eko Water Buses said that the firm is looking to have 60 vessels in operation by mid-2015. “We have decided to mitigate the overall risk of the project by having a proof of concept in the water. This will demonstrate our vision, while trialling the design and seeing how the equipment adapts to the environment in Lagos,” he said. “We are building new vessels rather than using second-hand ones as they need to be designed to completely fit the local
www.passengership.info
North District East Line Iddo-Ebute Ero Crossing
2 Ijede
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