“Oshodi Oshodi… Ketu Yaba, Alapere…”
Lagosians who board commercial buses daily are thankful that the conductors cry out at these bus stops. They scream at the top of their voices persuading passengers at every bus stop to enter their vehicle.
“Diligent conductors,” someone visiting Lagos for the first time would think, but the diligence and customer service ends when you are in the yellow bus popularly referred to as ‘Danfo’.
It is not uncommon to see these conductors exchange swear words or in extreme cases, blows with their passengers.
“Mo ní wọlé pẹ̀lú shengi ẹ (I warned you to enter with your change),” one of them screamed at Yemisi who has lived all her life in the peaceful Ondo State, and was visiting Lagos for the first. For the typical Lagosian, they would simply curse him or his mother and he would grudgingly produce the change he claimed not to have, but Yemisi pleaded with him that she didn’t have smaller denominations and eventually forgot to collect her balance when she got to her destination.
“It was like a gathering of mad people,” Yemisi recalled her first experience in the chaotic, economically vibrant city. After spending two years here, she seldom uses the popular danfo except in rare cases, she prefers the government-owned BRT buses and trains. “I don’t have to pay with cash not to talk of having change,” she told Ripples Nigeria.
Apart from the affordability and comfort it provides, a major attraction of the public BRT and the trains is the exclusive use of digital payment.
To pay your fare, you only need to place your recharged card on a card reader or scan a QR code with your phone.
Lagos Public Transport goes cashless
Lagos BRT has been a public service for over a decade, established through a public-private metro partnership.
The service was fraught with various irregularities including corruption, poor treatment of passengers, and delays, among others.
However, in 2020/2021, the state government introduced a cowry card to the BRT, as a cashless payment method. The Cowry card, produced by a local company, is a prepaid card that passengers recharge and use to pay for their transport.
Months later, the same payment method was extended to ferries, and later to the recently launched state railway system – the Blue and Red Lines. The Fintech, Touch, and Pay Technologies, which designed the Cowry card, receive payments on Lagos’ intra-city transportation services.
Emmanuel Timothy who lives in the mainland and works on the Island is a frequent user of the BRT. “For me, it’s the affordability and the comfort. I can’t imagine using danfo every day to work,” he said, highlighting the benefit of the government-owned transport service and its payment system.
It Also Has an App
Although the use of cash for payment is the most popular payment method for public transport services in Lagos, the Fintech managing the payment also provides an application through which passengers can make payments for fares with their phones.
A machine is placed at the entrance of a bus or train with a QR code for those who want to pay from the app. After scanning the code, the exact amount of the fare is deducted from their balance on the app.
A regular BRT user who identified himself as Efosa said he was not aware that there was an app. Toyin Morenikeju said the machine for the QR code is not always available, so “sometimes everyone is forced to use the card for payment.
Experts say the exclusive use of digital payment for the state public transport services allows for accountability and data gathering.
For instance, the state government reported that BRTs transported 7.4 million passengers between the start of August and the end of September 2023 and that 17,543 commuters were transported through the ferries. The government also reported that it received nearly N2 billion in fares during this period.
“One thing is clear: our electronic payment platform [Cowry] is assisting us to gather useful data which will allow us to plan transport services to the teeming people of Lagos State,” said Abimbola Akinajo, Managing Director of the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), which runs the city’s mobility services.
By: Oluwatobi Odeyinka
This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.
