If you live in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja or any of our thriving cities in Nigeria, everyday you battle with traffic, congestion or ‘go-slow’. You arrive at your destination angry and tired before the day even starts. That is just one issue that plagues our transportation system.

The responsibility of effectively moving people and goods from Point A to Point B is a big task with profound impact on the economy and the wellbeing of the populace. It is even more difficult when you have 170 million people to move around.

All over the country we contend with poor maintenance of roads, road accidents, overcrowding, irregular public transport, inadequate parking, limited infrastructure for non-motorised transport, and congested ports.

When transportation infrastructure is able to answer mobility needs, economic opportunities will arise by insuring access to markets and resources. Therefore,transport (the mobility of people and freight and levels of territorial accessibility) is closely related to socio-economic change.

Some cities have started to acknowledge this, by tackling daily transportation woes by implementing transport radio, tweeting traffic information, increasing the number of officials on the street and improving infrastructure. However this seems only to be scratching the surface of the problem and much more needs to be done.

Alongside the efforts of government, citizens need to propose practical solutions to our transport woes that can be delivered entrepreneurially. We need solutions that will; give Nigerians real-time mass transit information on land, rail, air and the waterways; promote safety on all transit channels; help with travel decision making; encourage collaborative commuting within and between cities; and speed up emergency response to transport incidences.

By thinking of ideas within these and more we can start to see a change in the way we travel and the way resources and markets connect.

CcHub is willing to support innovative yet practical ideas in these regards to be implemented

We will support the best ideas by giving access to up to $25,000 in investment as well as networks and market entry support to get kick-started.

So what next? Apply!

If you have an idea, small or big, to transform transportation in Nigeria tell us about it at www.socialchangelab.org.

The deadline for the first cycle ends on Sunday 14, December 2014.

Don’t wait till it is too late; your idea could be the next big thing that Nigeria needs.