Overnight parking, which used to be six thousand naira (N6,000) only, was increased to fifty thousand naira (N50,000) only. What is the mathematical rationale for this type of increase?

In 2021, Balosh, the company managing the toll system within the airport, was engaged by the Lagos State Government and Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), and it almost resorted into a crisis within the hospital premises because one would not be able to explain the rationale for having a patient in the hospital, and one would be charged for car park.

Nigerians are unable to commute by road, train, or even the waterways. Despite the rising cost of all modes of commuting, one is now confronted with an unjustified increase in airport parking rates.

With the rising cost of house rent cum accommodation in Lagos, people have moved to various suburbs of Lagos.

When they have a reason to travel, the most cost-effective option is to get their vehicle to the airport, park it, travel to their destination, and return to their vehicle to get home within 3-4 days.

When it was N6,000, everyone assumed that it was affordable and safe to keep their cars at the airport. Similar to what happens at the jetties and train station.

The rising cost of JetA1 has been attributed to the rising cost of air ticket which is almost beyond the reach of an average Nigerian; the rising cost of PMS (Petrol) at this time when Iran and US war is ongoing has made people abandoned their cars while app hailing taxi services are ‘cutting’ people’s heads off while the regular airport taxi call unfriendly rates to the already overtaxed Nigerian that has not gotten an increase in salary despite the galloping inflation.

Further rationalising this increase, it seems that the airport authority is now competing with the airlines- if one can afford a N300,000 return ticket, then one can also afford a N150,000 for a three-day parking at the airport.

This is not a fair deal for Nigerian travellers who are working hard to travel by air, given the imminent fear of what could go wrong on the road.

Can one liken the increase to a collaboration between the taxi unions and the airport to rip people off of their hard-earned money? What this means is that for anyone who cannot afford parking at the airport, you will be forced to use a taxi that is ‘seemingly’ above the law, which is in connivance with the private operator of the airport.

The enforcement team at MMA2 would never clamp taxis, but they aim at private vehicles that are forced to use the car park, regardless of how many minutes one wants to use at the airport.

Beyond the exorbitant rate introduced by the airport operator for the car park, they are also on the case of on-demand, multi-category delivery platform riders who pick up food items from restaurants within the airport. This wanton drive for revenue will kill more businesses than build a thriving economy.

Beyond the few excuses given by the operators of the car park and the airport. Nigerians need organisations that are empathetic and can feel the pulse of the people.

With the current rate, it means anyone without a driver cannot live a simple life of fueling his car at over a thousand naira per litre, drive to the airport, keep his car and return joyfully to Lagos with the intent of driving home.

This is another way of destroying the middle class in Nigeria. If you engage a friend, sibling or acquaintance without a license to drive your car away from the airport, and such a person runs into the VIO or FRSC, the problem becomes complicated.

It is expedient for the airport operators to devise a strategy to identify actual travellers, which should be based solely on their boarding passes and means of identification. For those whose boarding passes and tally slips given at the car park entrance can be matched, they should be given a concession.

They can deal decisively with other vehicles parked without justification. But making the car park rate unaffordable to the common man should not be allowed to stay.

There is no moral justification for overnight parking, let alone moving from 6,000 to 50,000! I will want to implore the Honourable Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development of Nigeria, Mr. Festus Keyamo, SAN; Managing Director of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, Mrs Olubunmi Kuku and other government agencies to please look into the matter and reduce the hardship being experienced by Nigerian travellers who need to park at MM2.

*Olutayo Irantiola is a PR Consultant and Public Affairs analyst based in Lagos, Nigeria

The unfolding University degree saga in Nigeria has brought to the fore the need for our country to look inward and strengthen our academic heritage.

It is pretty unfortunate where we have found ourselves as a country. I am not a beneficiary of the heydays when university students each chicken on Sundays, but the system has continued to nosedive year in and year out.

It is getting to a point where the federal government needs to evaluate its students across the globe so that we can effectively understand our situation. What do people want from the Nigerian educational system to ascertain where we are getting it wrong?

This brings to mind the number of students who are “exiled” so that they can get globally competitive certificates. In 2022 and 2023 respectively, Nigerian students have experienced war in Sudan Russia and Ukraine.

One of the most disheartening things about our tertiary institution is that passing the West African Examination Council Nigeria (WASC), Joint Admission Matriculation Board Examinations, and Post-JAMB of the various institutions, you are not guaranteed admission into your course of choice and even the university of choice.

You have to scramble for admission; seek a lecturer to help follow up on your admission. All these gave rise to people seeking admission in neighbouring countries.

With a burgeoning youthful population, there is a need for the government to enlarge the capacity of the various institutions, but we keep tightening the admission measures as typified above.

We cannot continue to allot admission quotas to institutions every session and expect parents who do not know anyone to keep their children at home for years while waiting for admission.

Until recently, first-class degrees were rare in Federal and State Universities because many lecturers believed that God was the only one who owned first-class while the lecturer owned second-class upper degrees, and students could jostle second-class lower and third-class degrees.

Whereas the labour market had labelled students with such degrees as: “half-baked and unemployable”. All these made parents get loans to train their children in all these mushroom institutions in the neighbouring countries.

Aside from the deep-pocket Nigerians who can afford to send their children to Ivy League universities in Europe and America, people are looking for ways in which their wards will save years in the university due to the incessant strikes that last many months.

Meanwhile, the government and the academic workforce have little or nothing to lose at the expense of the students’ lives. How long will Nigerian students have a timeline for completing a bachelor’s degree programme?

Another issue we have as a country is the conversion of all tertiary levels of education to Universities. No institution trains teachers again; it is now a University; no institution trains technicians again, and everyone wants to become an Engineer.

People without a University education cannot go beyond certain levels in Civil Service, amongst other limitations we place on our nationals.

Then, people can troop into another country to get a University degree of any type. This unrealistic demand of society has pushed students out of the country.

It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but people will want to go for any form of education, and the recent increase in fees paid in Nigerian tertiary institutions is not encouraging. Truly, the government is doing everything to reduce subsidy across the board, but Nigerians cannot see the additional value to the students. People will only go for a shortcut to beat the system as well.

There is a growing phenomenon now, Nigerians are gunning for honorary doctorate degrees, and all of these degrees are coming from the same institutions that the Ministry of Education is suspending the accreditation and evaluation of degree certificates from in Benin Republic, Togo, Uganda, Kenya and Niger Republic.

Do we need to wait for a Crisis to break out before we take the appropriate steps?

I am not justifying wrongs, but it is a charge for the government and academic leaders to wake up from their age-long slumber; they need to find ways of redeeming the educational image of the country and overhauling the educational sector.

A quote by the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo:

“To attain the goals of economic freedom and prosperity, Nigeria must do certain things as a matter of urgency and priority. It must provide free education at all levels and free health facilities for the masses of its citizens”.

If it is not free now, we need to get it right if we will stop falling to the tricks being paid on Nigerians by other countries in our search for certificates.

*Olutayo Irantiola, a Lagos-based PR Consultant, Playwright and Biographer, blogs on www.peodavies.com. 

There is no gainsaying that these markets are due for closure. However, what next after the re-opening of the markets?

One of the places in town synonymous with huge refuse generation is the markets. Many times, markets are considered to belong to nobody; as such, traders want their immediate environment habitable for their businesses, and at the close of the day, they “drop” the byproducts of their wares somewhere, mainly on the roadside by the huge refuse collector and head to their various abodes.

Yes, we will not, but blame the traders for not doing the appropriate thing. However, with the recent strategic move of the Ministry of Environment and LAWMA, everybody will know that it is no more business as usual. You have to take full responsibility for your environment, or else, the state will deal with you.

However, there needs to be a pivotal strategy by the government to ensure that refuses do not become a menace for the traders, with the campaign on Circular Economy and how to achieve this. It is time to really put this into action for the good of every Lagosian.

The Lagos State Government and LAWMA need to design a model of evacuation of refuse to these markets so that there would be seamless management.

For instance, Mile 12 markets, wherein groceries are sold at the open market, will always have perishable items. There is a need for the government to know if this waste can be used to nourish the soil or even made into consumables for livestock. If this is done, there will be a significant drop in wastage that we currently face as a nation.

At the moment, there are some peculiar markets, Computer Village and Alaba, Aswani and Yaba, with products that the world is still grappling with the best way of handling its waste; these are the largely electronic-related-waste and clothes. We do not have a model that will resolve waste, and it has become expedient to know how to fix this challenge too.

The peculiarity of each market will determine what will be done to ensure that we get the best out of the waste produced daily. So, we need to develop a strategy for markets that deal in motor parts, fashion, and accessories, pieces of furniture, metals, amongst others.

I would also want to drum up support for the state government’s action. As a result of the import-dependent nature of the Nigerian economy, many traders have had the opportunity to travel to nations wherein they import their wares and also gone on pilgrimage either to Jerusalem or Saudi Arabia. The famous saying, “Opopo Mecca mo roro”, means the streets of Mecca are sparkling clean. However, we all enjoy making our roads stink.

With the level of Government investment in LAWMA and the franchisees located across the state, there are still insufficient waste truck collectors that can serve these markets daily, and that is why the level of waste keeps growing geometrically and the unending competitive need for the services of these waste collectors from the residential areas to the commercial areas.

This might warrant the closure of the commercial spaces every week because of the attendant waste.

The LAWMA Summer Academy for children needs to be infused into the curriculum for students of Lagos State so that we can begin to catch them young.

If the content of the training is made available to children through the classroom, they will, in turn, educate their parents, and this will lead to attitudinal change in the community at large.

Beyond the sanctions on residential and commercial areas on issues of waste management, a stakeholder forum on effective waste management for a mega city like Lagos needs to be organized so that we can take lessons that will turn our waste into wealth.

The game is not over, the advocacy is not over, and the attitudinal change should really begin now across all societal strata so that our Lagos can also receive accolades for being one of the cleanest states in Nigeria and Africa at large.

*Olutayo Irantiola, PR Consultant, Creative Writer and Public Affairs Analyst writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He blogs on www.peodavies.com, and can be reached via peodaviescomms@gmail.com.