More on that later.
It is time to have a Hackney Permit. To the Tax Office (TO), he heads. It is a busy day and he knows it. In some of the offices, he could be in as many as four queues on the day. For stickers, for badges for driver and for conductor there is for each, a queue. And for Haulier's clearance certificate too. All are taxes and they go hand in glove with the hackney permit. He pays a processing fee in each queue. Some hauliers ask for receipts for each payment made, but they get none. If they thought they would have support of their peers in the queue, they are rudely shocked. They stop arguing and pay. That is only the start of a process that would last more than three months. And that, they would have to go through year after year.
The haulier must have his truck's roadworthiness certificate to qualify for a hackney permit. That could be easy or hard to come by. If he would give no egunje, he could be at the VIO's office for weeks. If he would give, he could have it in an hour. And his trucks does not have to be out of work for one minute. The VIO does not have to see it to know that it is worthy of our roads. As with one truck, so, with others. And a large number of unsafe trucks could be on the bad roads.
That is fresh air for the bad haulier. The truck needs no sprucing up, let alone repairs. That saves money for him and puts a mobile coffin on the roads. For the haulier that wants to run a good service, the problems have just begun. He does not have the returns to maintain his trucks. Others would buy and use second-hand tyres. He would not. They would use second hand spare parts. He would not. Others would use the trucks even if parts of it won't work.
They reckon that the back-up parts could help them along if they work. It does not matter that they put other road users in peril. He would not do that. The haulier has been to hell to put his truck on the road. But what might the trucker encounter on that road Just the bumps, the Police and the Federal Road Service Corps (FRSC) Not, at all. There is the fuel, often adulterated by profiteers. There are roadside mechanics ready to sell parts of death. There are armed robbers, and the workers of any of the 774 local governments on the routes.
Like the Police, the FRSC makes the highway a passage through hell. They have not learnt to beat up truckers yet. But, they ask for more money than the Police do. Theirs is no bribe; it is extortion. They would keep truckers in a spot for hours, day or night even if the goods carried were perishable. The trucker had better pay up or they would list imagined faults in his truck and send him to banks to pay hefty fines in places other than where he lives.
The fact of the matter is that the FRSC knows that most trucks on our roads are mobile but dying contraptions. And the roads on which they run are cemeteries all the way. They know too, that most truckers carry loads for money they would not declare to the hauliers on their return home. Warped minds in the corps take advantage of these, to go after them and the haulier.
Covens of workers for the Federal Government, the states and the local governments, show up on the roads. They are all over the place from 8.a.m to 5.p.m. Mondays through Fridays. It does not matter the road. Bad dream. Their arms Steel spikes on wood or metal base to puncture tyres that they cannot make or buy. Some symbol of authority, often ID cards worn around the necks.
They want money from the haulier for all shades of taxes. And or for themselves. Fair tax is good. Egunje is an evil. But, they all want money. It does not matter how. What money and who collects it and for what In a sense, we mirror here, how we think the federal and state structures should work and relate. And how the states and the local governments should work one with the other. The haulier pays for the Joint Revenue Committee's (JRC) Vehicle Tax Clearance Certificate. But the Delta State and states east of the Niger would not accept that as well as the authority of the JRC. In Port Harcourt, this refusal can be cruel. Oral reports state that some of these states want hauliers in other states to pay tax to them. After all, oil from their states it is that keeps the country going, they have been alleged to say.
In 2003, the Joint Tax Board met in Abuja to stop the rash of taxes. Some agents of the Federal Government, the local governments and the states have by these taxes, raised the cost of haulage. That was and is bad for food. JRC wanted to stop it. Yet, that meeting solved nothing. How much is the fight worth Some six to N20,000 for a tax clearance certificate for each truck it is. That covers for Mobile Outdoor Advert Display for branded trucks, and for classification emblem. You don't have to know what they mean. And hauliers have through force on their truckers, paid in more than one state in a year.
The haulier pays a plethora of taxes, some direct and others not so direct and repeated in many states. And you would have thought that that should earn him the freedom to go where he would with his truck. But if his trucker were to carry food items, any states revenue collector could tax him many times within one state. And that in each state that he might pass through. The tax is a minimum of N1,000 each time they stop him. That is chaos with a reason whose logic is the greed of bankrupt power.
What does the haulier get for his pain Tears. He relies on big business to use his trucks. And they gladly do. They have to reach the market (the people) to sell. But, how They take his trucks away from the motor park to their parking lot. They give him the right to the load if they have it. The problem is, they give the same right to many more. He would haul what they give him to where they want it at a price they want to pay. That price would take no account of his huge daily carrying charges if he parked at the lot for days on end.
They ask all of him as well as the exclusive use of his trucks. And he must give in, in the face of others ready to take his place with their jalopies. What does big business care When might they learn that they need good trucks no less than they need other good tools Fast or it would slow their growth and put their health at risk. The better ones of them pay what they will every two weeks. The others might pay in a month or two. If they happen to sell oil products, they could make him pay cash for the AGO he needs. That's the way of all despots in full flight.
Today, hauliers fail before they start. The trucks die by the day. The truckers, managing directors that they become away from the haulier's view, have the Police, FRSC, the VIOs and local government workers across the country to feed. Big business does not want to know that. Yet, it is all part of the haulier's pain. Some users just want to get their goods in the hold of the trucks. It does not matter that the truckers are out to cheat the hauliers.
Can't we abolish those costs that we can control Can't the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) banish fake spare parts from our markets That would help hauliers bring down their cost. And make haulage safe. Can we stop the Police, the FRSC, the VIO, and the local government workers who extort They are tearing our lives apart. There is no place yet in the county for the good haulier. No surprise that he is a victim of stress and early demise. Quicker than the first scrap of his truck hits Owode Onirin. No surprise too, that road haulage here is replete with moving coffins. What payback we would have for a sector that big business has put in great peril! It just can't grow to help our future.
Uwaifo, a retired NEPA worker, lives in Lagos
