Our system doesn’t allow corruption —Chairman, PTS, Salami

Hon. Ibraheem Salami is the Chairman and Sole Administrator of the Oyo State Pacesetter Transport Service, he was also the Director, Youth Mobilisation of Governor Seyi Makinde’s 2023 election. In this interview with YINKA OLADOYINBO, he speaks on efforts at expanding the operations of the PTS, issues of corruption in the system, among others. Excerpt

SINCE you became the chairman here, how will you describe your tenure at the Pace Setters Transport Company?

Let me first give this opportunity to thank His Excellency, Engr Seyi Makinde, the governor of the state who in his magnanimity deemed it fit to appoint me as the chairman and sole administrator of Pace Setter Transport Services. People feel this is an agency of the government, yes, you can call it an agency, but it is a complete private company owned by the state government. So the way we’re supposed to run it should more of a private entity than of a public entity. The laws, policies that guide it is more of the same laws that guide the banks, private companies across the length and breadth of Oyo State or Nigeria. Talking about my tenure, it has been inspiring and challenging because when I came in, Pacesetters Transport Services had no structure, it is like a dumping site for discrepancies. I was appointed July 24 2023 so I resumed when I came in, all the banks accounts that they were using have been frozen by the court because there is a tax liability of over 100 million naira. We cleared that within six months. There are five busses working. I inherited a whole lot of liabilities, yes, I inherited assets, but more liabilities than assets, because there are only five functional busses and we have over 120 drivers, over 70 mechanics. We have over 300 administrative staff, over 65 grounded busses. But within the space of July, 25 and August 10 that my Governor broadcast safer package, we already have 46 boxes. So we put 30 busses into intra city and we also put 16 busses to intercity, that is Shaki, Iseyin, Ogbomoso. So, between July 25 that I came in, and August 31 they are making around 300,000 per day because before then there was the tradition of collecting cash. So there was no way to track records of the money being made and we’re spending over 2.7 million naira on diesel on a daily basis. So on September 24, 2023, we launched the card payment system that allows us to block leakages. You have to pay into our card payment system and it allows you go to our boss. You also tap on the bus with that, when we launched this card payment system, we made about 3 million naira daily, and that was how we started having a sanity system, a system that is safe. And from then, we started paying pensions and gratuity from 1994 because they have not been paying pensions for a lot of years. So we started clearing pensions and gratuity, and that was how we could revive Pacesetters to what it is today. Our drivers were collecting 31,000, 18,000 as salaries before but today we are paying them over 97,000 on a monthly basis. Cleaners were being paying 15,000 monthly, but today they are collecting 57,000.

Despite all you have said it is like the masses no longer feel the impact of government-owned transportation system, what do you have to say to this?

I don’t know more about the TCTC era, talking about the present situation things have changed like I said, we made five busses that were functional, and there were only two routes in Ibadan that were working, but today we are serving over 37 routes in Ibadan and those routes are commuting over 30,000 people on a daily basis. Our intercity routes, which are Ibadan to Iseyin, Oyo, Lagos, Abuja, Ibarapa are taking over 12,000 people on a daily basis, that makes 42,000 on a daily basis. Yes, there are times whereby we have challenges of wear and tear, because our busses move from Monday to Saturday. So sometimes we have to bring back the busses in, do servicing, do tires. We have a tracking device, CCTV camera, and we have free Wi Fi on our buses. So even from the number of people that connect to our free Wi Fi, you get your data from them with tracker, we can track how my busses are moving from one point A to point B, from Point C to point D. And the reason why we are doing all this is because we have seen reasons why drivers are meant to go from point A to point B, and it diverts your buss to Lagos to go and pick people. So we put tracker on all those busses to track the movement of our drivers.

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What are the other innovations that you have introduced to make the organisation better?

Maybe because I’m a chartered accountant, I am more particular about increasing profitability, apart from the fact that we are also to commute the people of Oyo State, part of what we have done is also to expand our routes to Lagos and Abuja. We partnered with the federal government on the Presidential CNG busses to bring in about 30 CNG busses to the state. If we are to buy those buses it will cost us about N2.3 billion to get those busses ourselves, we put them on the road to serve between Ibadan to Lagos, Lagos back to Ibadan, and then also serve Abuja back to Lagos. the expansion has allowed us to commute over 1500 people per day between Ibadan and Lagos, and also Ibadan to Abuja. We have been able to expand towards carrying goods and services as well, which is haulage. Presently, we are working on building our own CNG gas station. So we partner with a company called Atlas Cop Company Limited, this company is injecting over 600 million naira to build a CNG gas station for us and release it for them for the next 20 years. That deal is going to fetch us 25 per cent of their revenue on a monthly basis for the next 20 years, and that will sustain the salaries, the sustained pacesetters for the next 20 years. This kind of deal is a legacy for me, I believe in sustaining pacesetters more beyond today, so giving them this to run for the next 20 years we are moving towards the entire value chain of transport. We have diesel in our compound; we have petrol in our compound, now we are having a CNG gas station also in our compound, which means my busses don’t have the queue on the road for petrol, diesel or gas. We are also moving into haulage, we have gotten two trucks to start moving farmer goods and services from Shaki.

There’s this belief that Pacesetters Transport Company is synonymous with corruption, how have you been able to manage that?

I am facing same thing right now, people saying that, Oh, our own led administration is also corrupt, diverting money, in fact, there are different petitions that have been sent to the EFCC, ICPC, Oyo State of Assembly, OYACA. But my simple answer is that this is happening because there is resistance to corruption, like people are resisting change. You can’t put systems and these controls in place because you want to steal. Corruption is for the minority. If you want to steal, you don’t need crowd to make things work, because you don’t want to get exposed. What we have done in Pacesetter is entirely for the majority and not for the minority. Putting a card system in place is to be able to block leakages and make the value of that money to be useful for the people of Pacesetters transport services to make things better. When I came in, there were no fans, no AC, no chairs, no table in all the offices that we met, there are louvers across the window, but today our staffs now have ID cards, our drivers now have better complete uniform, our staff now use the clocking system to sign in and out and also we are paying salaries with that, there is now a proper system that clearly distinguishes us from a bad or a corrupt system. We now know how many passengers we carry daily. if you know the number of passengers you carry on a daily basis, and you know the amount of money that each passenger is paying, how are you going to be corrupt? There’s a system that clearly shows you the data. So despite all petitions being labeled against our administration, we have won every. if you’re doing all those things, why are we going through all those lengths if we are truly corrupt? The reason why people are dragging us on social media, writing petition, is because it does not favor them. The system does not allow you to be corrupt. You cannot do two things together; you cannot be stealing and be working. It’s either you are stealing and you will not work, because of we could able to block leakages and wastages. Of course, when you make more money, things get better. We can’t bank on the little we are making right now. We have to think outside the box to make more and by making more, we can pay more salaries. So for me, people can say whatever they want. I don’t mind, but truly, the work will speak for itself and that is what we are doing. And right now we still have pension from 2020, till date, which we’re still about to clear. And like I said, and I promised that before I finish my tenure we’re going to clear that. We don’t want the next person to inherit what we have inherited, the liabilities, the bad side of this place. That’s why we’re trying to change the narrative. And part of we making profit and trying to improve our standard we created an international standard ICT department whereby they have multiple laptops, they have two 100 inches flat screen that they can monitor all our busses across the length and breadth of Oyo State, Lagos and Abuja. Why are we doing that? We can be corrupt if we want, but no because we have created a system that works, everything about us is now automated, I don’t have to be in the office before I can sign the files, even if I am not in Nigeria they can send me cheques, send me files on the laptop I approve for them and they get whatever they want.

What are those things that you want to be remembered for years after leaving Pacesetters Transport?

I want to be remembered for the good policies, implementation of policies that keep sustaining pacesetter transport and that would outlive my administration that why I am doing everything possible to ensure that the next person coming after me does not go through all these backlash, dragging and what have you. I have gone through a lot, we are trying to implement policies that allow that every staff if trained and retrained. The one that is dear to me now is that in the next two months we will be handing over our mechanical workshop to a company by privatizing it. We have been having issues with mechanics having archaic knowledge of doing things, so we want new innovation in this direction.