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The Rôle of Touts in Passenger Transport in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Enoch E. Okpara
Enoch E. Okpara
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Geography, Imo State University, Okigwe, Nigeria
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Extract

Touts can be defined as free-lance workers at railway stations, airports, ferry points, and especially motor-parks, who undertake the self-imposed responsibility of recruiting and organising passengers who wish to travel by road, and for this work they receive a fee, or more appropriately, a ‘commission’, that is generally paid by the drivers of the vehicles just before their departure. All the owners are private entrepreneurs, who both compete and collaborate with one another to provide road transport for the public.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 327 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Page 327 note 1 100 kobo = 1 Naira (₦) = during 1987 £0.14 and U.S.$0.20.Google Scholar

Page 329 note 1 Hay, Allan, ‘The Importance of Passenger Transport in Nigeria’, in Hoyle, B. S. (ed.), Transport and Development (London, 1973), p. 129.Google Scholar

Page 329 note 2 See, for example, Hart, Keith ‘Small-Scale Entrepreneurs in Ghana and Development Planning’, in The Journal of Development Studies (London), 6, 4, 1970, p. 109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 329 note 3 Katzin, M., ‘The Role of the Small Entrepreneur’, in Herskovitz, Melville J. and Harwitz, Mitchell (eds.), Economic Transition in Africa (London, 1964), p. 193.Google Scholar

Page 331 note 1 See Hart, Keith, ‘Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 11, I, March 1973, pp. 61–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 331 note 2 Connell, John et al., Migration from Rural Areas: the evidence from village studies (New Delhi, 1976), pp. 59–65.Google Scholar

Page 332 note 1 Source: field-work in Imo State, 1985. An Ikeja Magistrate's Court has sentenced 19 people to two months imprisonment with hard labour each, without an option of fine for operating as touts at the Murtala Muhammed Airport. The prosecution alleged that the men, with no fixed addresses, were arrested by a combined team of the Airport Security Corps and the Nigerian Police in an early morning raid at the airport on Saturday, April 21. The Magistrate…said the conviction of the men would serve as a deterrent to others.

Page 334 note 1 Cf. McGee, T. G. and Young, Y. M., Hawkers in Southeast Asian Cities: planning for the bazaar economy (Ottawa, 1977), p. 11.Google Scholar