The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic is a huge stone block to the economic activities of countries all over the Globe. The COVID-19 which originated and started at Wuhan, China has spread to almost all the countries of the world. The Virus has caused serious setback to all the economic activities of countries if not all.
Unlike all the economic activities of the world which cut across power sector, trading, education and soon. Transportation sector has also been one of the primary victims of the outbreak of COVID-19 which has been a very important factor of aiding development and growth of a country. All economic activities are based on transportation of their product and services.
However, following the lockdown of economic activities in many countries Transportation business has been running at a very great loss, as workers, students (people) are not been working or carrying bus to their destination except those who are exempted such as Health officials, broadcasters, Security Personnel such as police, army, and other important security personnel. Most of the exempted personnel have their personal cars or company buses to convey them to their destinations.
A result by some health official’s researchers in Wuhan, China has shown through CCTV evidence, how a passenger infected nine other passengers in a public bus on 22nd of January, 2019. This loss has made countries advised bus transporters to maintain social distancing in their buses.
Nigeria, like other countries has also experienced serious setback in the transportation sectors as economic activities has been put on hold for the main time till the Covid19 waves off. Thousands of people in Nigeria has placed their main hope on transportation sector for their daily survival, due to this outbreak of Covid19 virus have no means of survival as people stays at home to ensure the precautionary measures laid down by the Government most importantly maintain social distancing.
Following restrictions which was placed on transportation in Nigeria around April, both public transport services and their demand were badly affected. Most of the groceries stores, supermarkets have been judiously making use of their available products to their customers which has reduced the transportation of goods and services in the country. Groices stores and supermarkets are exempted due to the fact that in order to make people get food stuffs and increase of products in Nigeria are moved in the stores, but its activity has dropped drastically because they render other services such as online services to their customers through means of transportation.
The Transportation sector has also affected the oil industry in a very huge way as there is a notable decline in the fuel consumption due to the fact that most commercial vehicles are principal and important tool that aids advance purchase in fueling economy.
When schools in the country were closed and social distancing measures being observed, there is a very huge drop in bus activities. For instance, it is recorded that there is a huge drop of oil rates all over the world and there has been an -0.5 in the oil rates while a Netflix login has now cost more than that the oil prices in the world. The world economy depends on oil but due to lack of people to purchase oil at a result of restricted movement due to covd19 pandemic, the world is experiencing economic meltdown.
The Outbreak has affected the modes of transportation due to the perception of people on the spread of the virus which is associated to risk of crowded areas and places. A lot of people will avoid making use of the bus transportation for a short period or even long time. If the issues normalize, it will be very hard to find an average Nigerian to travel out of the country or even interstate especially the most affected areas in Nigeria such as Lagos, Abuja or even leaving the place to other states. People might avoid public transport modes to prevent themselves in a crowded place or area and also avoidance of motorcycles, tricycles. Furhermore , commuting and traveling patterns might not return to its normal state unlike before the Covid19 started once the lockdown is lifted .
As earlier stated most drivers who employs the use of app based taxi services such as Uber,Taxify and so on which served as their means of survival were economical suffering due to the COVID-19 lock down, because most of people they commute from one place to another will not place order as the result of the lockdown.
Recall that during the lockdown period, people have been exposed to walking on streets with neither pollution or congestion due to no transport modes. Most organizations due this lockdown has shifted their focus from moving citizens to how to maintain their core transportation system operation to enable their key essential workers to move and get to work most especially the exempted agencies due to the pandemic. Most Workers who are exempted and have no car of their own focus will be majorly on the organisation provision for transportation. Long term investment programs may need to be replamned and reproriortized in the light of decreased revenues there are restricted movement, investment plan which are scheduled for immediate actualization will be re planned as there is no means of transporting the services and goods to be invested and if no re planned for due to unavailability of transportation could cause loss. The transportation sector is one of the main strong bone behind development of a country economy.
Most of the companies or Organiztions need to make a very great step of making plan for the availibilty of key perssonel to ensure that its staff with critical skills and trainings are available throughout the pandanemic locdown to keep network operational by working from home to ensure the smooth running of the organization due no availabity of movement caused by the lockdown.
Organisation are to curb this challenges by putting up its staff to work from home if necessary or put in place necessary guidelines which will enable safe reopening.
