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INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
existed, the skeletal rail services in Lagos and port Harcourt, and ferry services in the
coastal cities like Lagos, Calabar, and Port Harcourt. The surviving municipal operators
were by the end of 1987 found only in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Benin City. The
other defunct state owned companies operating intra-city and inter-city in Oyo, Kwara,
former Benue and Plateau, Kano, and Borno states had collapsed in 1980. Indeed there
were cases in which two or three other previous efforts of establishing State Transport
Corporations had failed. Such examples include Kano state and Ibadan municipality.
Factors responsible for the collapse of these erstwhile companies included inefficient
management, fraud, lack of autonomy from supervising state ministry, adverse
competition from numerous small-scale private operators and heavy operational deficits.
However, these companies were relative to most private operators operating on fixed
routes. They are more safety conscious and possessed better trained staff and
maintenance facilities (Bolade, 1993).
Commencing from January 1988, the federal and state urban mass transit programmes
were embarked upon to mitigate against some of the deficiencies and inadequacies in
public transportation.The establishment of an urban mass transit task force preceded the
implementation of the federal programme. To implement the programme, the sum of
N700 million was initially budgeted in the 1988 fiscal year. Budgetary realities during the
year permitted the release of N151 million within the limit of available funds. Federal
efforts are intended to complement and strengthen the states‘ programme where the prime
responsibilities for urban transport lie.
At the state level, the most pronounced activities have been connected with the
establishment of transport companies through which both the federal allocated and state
owned buses are being operated. Starting at different dates from March 1988, all the
states have commenced mass transit operations.
Although the state owned mass transit companies started operations at different dates
from March 1988, a few, such as Lagos, Bendel (present day Edo and Delta states) and
Kaduna had operated established services before this date. For example, Kaduna state and
Lagos state transport services were incorporated on March 2, 1979. Oyo, Ondo, and
Anambra were among the first set of states in the federation to embrace the urban mass
transit programme. Each of the states set up a limited liability company. For Oyo (now
Oyo and Osun states) the Trans City Transport Company (TCPC) was incorporated on
December 7, 1987, but was officially launched on July 9, 1988, commencing commercial
operations on July 11, 1988. For Ondo (now Ondo and Ekiti States), the Owena Mass
Transport Company (OMTC) started operations on August 1, 1988 while in Anambra
(now Enugu and Anambra states) the Transport Company of Anambra (TRACAS) was
commissioned on September 12, 1988 (Filani and Abumere, 1993).
The public nature of these enterprises and proliferation of mass transit services has
informed the current research of determining whether the mass transit enterprises are
delivering the right quality of services to their consumers. The concept of quality is of the
major value customers expect from their service providers. Most consumers will no
COPY RIGHT © 2011 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 93
JANUARY 2011
VOL 2, NO 9