Eromosele Abiodun
The Chartered Institute of Transport Administrators (CIOTA), Nigeria has reinstated its commitment to support efforts by the federal government to transform the nation’s transportation sector.
To achieve this, CIOTA said it will continue to fund research and come up with ideas as to how to transform the transportation sector from what is currently obtainable to multi modal means of transportation in the country.
President of the institute, Dr. Bashir Jamoh stated this over the weekend at a media briefing to announce CIOTA’s second National Transport Summit and Annual General Meeting, which will commence tomorrow.
He said the second summit would build on the gains of the maiden edition held one year ago in Abuja.
According to him, “CIOTA has taken her place as the foremost and exclusive charter body designed by legislation to drive the Nigerian transportation sector. It is expected that the conference will contribute to our having enduring, sustainable transport infrastructure, address issues relating to funding, development of the fours modes not in silos but together as each mode is connected to the other.
“We will also be exploring partnership concepts and making a case for private participation in the railway.”
He added that the rebuilding of Nigeria’s transport infrastructure is currently in progress in many fronts.
“The rail network, highways and bridges, deep sea ports, airports concessioning are some of the areas of strategic focus. The building of inland ports represents a hybrid innovation and technology for extending the hinterland of ports, providing opportunities for multi-modalism in the use of rail, road transportation and short sea shipping.”
He added: “However, there are enormous challenges in the efforts. These include funding, Public-Private partnership (PPP) arrangements, institution building and the CODID-19 issues, which have increased the risk of transportation globally. The summit will address the many facets of these outlined issues, using the expertise and rich industrial experience of the speakers, discussants, and active audience participation.”
As part of the objectives of the summit, he said it would discuss the context of sustainable transport infrastructure development in Nigeria in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
“We will analyse the opportunities, innovation, technologies and current challenges in the provision of air and road transportation. We will discuss the automobile industry in Nigeria, showing an example of success in indigenous vehicle technology development, discuss alternative and innovative source of finance and funding, including PPP arrangements for transport infrastructure development in Nigeria and analyse the role of pipeline transportation in the sustainable development of transport in Nigeria, “he said.
