THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said residents of Bauchi paid the lowest bus fare within the city in January.

The NBS said this in the “Transport Fare Watch for January 2019” published on its website.

The bureau said the residents paid N98.28 per bus trip, followed by residents of Abia and Enugu who paid N121.11 and N125.24 respectively.

The transport fare watch covered the following categories: bus journey within the city per drop on regular routes, intercity bus journeys and state routes as well as charge per person.

It also covered air fare charge for specified routes per journey, journey by motorcycle (Okada) per drop, and water way passenger transport.

Meanwhile, the report said states with highest bus fare for journeys within the city were Abuja (N300.27), Cross River (N307.69) and Zamfara, N302.03.

It said the average fare paid by commuters for bus journey within city decreased by -3.60 per cent month-on-month and -4.78 per cent year-on-year from N181.61 in December 2018 to N175.07 in January.

According to the bureau, the average fare paid by commuters for bus journey intercity decreased from N1,790.14 in December 2018 to N1,541.38 in January.

It said the fare decreased by -13.90 per cent month-on-month and by 18.43 per cent year-on-year in the period under review.

It named states with highest bus fare for journeys within intercity to be Abuja (N4,100.00), Adamawa (N2,290.00) and Ekiti (N2,187.50) while states with lowest were Nasarawa (N146.67), Bauchi (N958.33) and Zamfara (N965.32).

It said the average fare paid by air passengers for specified routes single journey decreased by -3.20 per cent month-on-month and by -7.84 per cent year-on-year.

The NBS said the average fare paid by air passengers decreased to N30,463.86 in January  from N31,471.62 recorded in December 2018.

“States with highest air fare are Anambra (N33,695.03), Abuja (N35,000.00) and Jigawa (N37,500.00) while states with lowest air fare are Oyo (N24,000.91), Nasarawa (N25,000.32), and Katsina (N25,000.00),’’ it said.

The report said the average fare paid by commuters for journey by motorcycle per drop increased by -3.88 per cent month-on-month and 5.21 per cent year-on-year.

According to the report, the average fare paid by commuters for journeys by motorcycle per drop increased to N113.76 in January from N118.35 in December 2018.

It said states with highest fares for journeys by motorcycle per drop were Kogi (N188.18), Ondo (N184.55) and Rivers (N177.86) while states with lowest fare by motorcycle per drop were Adamawa (N50.03) Kebbi (N55.13) and Jigawa (N61.05).

The bureau said the average fare paid by passengers for water way passenger transport decreased to N537.14 in January from N568.58 in December 2018.

It said the average fare paid by passengers for water way passenger transport decreased by -5.53 per cent month-on-month and 15.81 per cent year-on-year in the period under review.

It named states with highest fare by water way passenger transport to include Bayelsa (N1,950.32), Rivers (N1,733.33) and Delta (N1,421.43).

It said the states with the lowest fare by water way passenger transport were Borno (N112.59), Niger (N185.25) and Gombe (N180.30).

The field work for the survey transport watch was done solely by more than 700 NBS members of staff in all states of the federation, supported by supervisors who were monitored by internal and external observers.

Fuel Prices were collected across all the 774 local governments across all states and the FCT from more than 10,000 respondents and locations.

It reflected actual prices households’ and states actually bought those fuels together with the prices reportedly sold by the fuel suppliers.

NBS audit team subsequently conducted randomly selected verification of the prices recorded. (NAN)

– Feb. 18, 2019 @ 14:25 GMT |