From Truck to Motor Vehicle: Wheeled Transportation in Ekiti of Southwestern Nigeria Before 1960

Abstract

In the pre-colonial Ekiti, porterage was the main mode of transportation, since goods or other valuable items had to be carried, on heads, from one place to another. At the early stage of colonization, some colonial “masters” were also carried on heads through difficult terrains. Porterage, however, changed to truck transportation as a better means of transportation, particularly from the second decade of the 19^th century. Truck transportation also gave way to bicycle transportation which by the 1940s had become very popular in Ekiti, particularly with the Igbo traders who epitomized this transportation culture till the late 1950s. Motor transportation eventually became the most enduring and comfortable transportation system whose history among the Ekiti goes back to the late 1920s, as instrumentalized by the colonial government, the expatriate firms and, later, the indigenous motor companies. Before independence, the Ekiti people, with improved road infrastructure, had acquired a reliable transportation system that promoted people’s social and economic activities.