Chinedu Eze
In an effort to streamline the operations of taxis at the Abuja, Lagos and other airports under its management, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has temporarily banned Uber and Bolt e-hailing platforms, until talks are concluded among the parties.
A lawyer who has been engaging with the taxi operators at the Lagos airport, Williams Ikem, told THISDAY that FAAN reorganised the activities of taxis at the nation’s two major airports, but would do everything possible to have full control of their activities and to determine the kind of services the taxis offer to air travellers who use the airports.
“Over the years, FAAN had frowned at taxi association like the then Airport Car Hire Association of Nigeria and has decided to recognise the operators as individual companies, in an effort to streamline taxi operation at the airports. The ones who formed the now defunct association have been there over the years. They are the traditional car hire service providers.
“These car hire operators have made financial contributions to be operating at the airports, but Uber and Bolt are not complying with FAAN’s regulations. For example, FAAN wants relatively new vehicles as taxis. So, it directed that all vehicles used at taxis at the airport must not be older than 2012. Uber and Bolt have different criteria. Their inspectors want cars that have air conditioning and meets all other conditions of road worthiness, but FAAN is interested in the age of the vehicles,” the lawyer said.
He also explained that FAAN wanted to have agreement with Uber and Bolt, but the two e-hailing service providers did not agree with this, maybe because they have already registered with government.
“Also, the taxis at the airport are monitored by FAAN and they have a tradition at the airport. If airport taxi takes you to your destinations, for example, to Victoria Island, it will drive empty without picking another passenger back to the airport. So, if the person that was taken to Victoria Island forgot anything in the vehicle, whatever he forgot, he will recover and it is a tradition among the operators. People are always forgetting things in airport taxis and they always recover them. That principle does not resonate with Uber and Bolt. They don’t have that allegiance with FAAN,” Ikem said.
Hamidu situated the programme within a broader challenge confronting agricultural finance in Africa: the relationship between knowledge, risk, and financial institutions’ disposition towards the sector. According to him, increasing finance to African agriculture requires continually improving the knowledge, systems, and capabilities that determine how finance is sourced, structured, deployed and managed.
“At NIRSAL, we have always maintained that agriculture, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is not underfinanced because opportunities do not exist, but because the risks have not been sufficiently understood, measured, appropriately priced, and managed,” Hamidu said.
The NIRSAL Managing Director described the Masterclass as particularly timely, noting that climate change is no longer an abstract global concern but a practical reality confronting farmers, agribusinesses and their financiers every production season across Africa.