When the Bus Becomes Everybody’s Platform

I have been trying to imagine the Nigerian commercial bus without the preacher, the hawker, the medicine seller, the phone accessories dealer and the salesman whose product can apparently cure everything except poverty.

It is difficult.

The Nigerian bus has long been more than transportation. It has become a travelling marketplace, sometimes a pulpit and occasionally a theatre in which the passenger is an unwilling member of the audience.

Now the Senate wants us to revisit the rules. The controversy followed the passage of the Federal Road Safety Corps Amendment Bill, 2026, which proposes a ₦50,000 penalty for preaching, hawking or trading inside commercial vehicles. The Senate has since clarified that this is not a new prohibition. It says the restriction has existed since the 2007 FRSC law and the 2012 National Road Traffic Regulations.

That clarification raises an embarrassing question: if the law has been there since 2007, why are we behaving as though somebody has just discovered it?
Perhaps the law has been sleeping. Or perhaps Nigerians have simply been ignoring it.
Either way, the controversy gives us an opportunity to ask what should be permissible inside a public vehicle.

Let me begin from the uncomfortable position of a Christian. The Bible says, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.” It does not provide a bus timetable for evangelism. It does not say preaching must take place only inside church buildings.

The Nigerian Constitution also protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to manifest and propagate one’s religion through worship, teaching, practice and observance. So, yes, the Christian has a right to preach.

ADVERTISEMENT

But there is another principle worth remembering: the liberty of one person does not become a licence to disregard another person’s liberty. The man sitting beside the preacher paid his fare too. He may be a Christian. He may be a Muslim. He may belong to another faith. He may belong to no faith at all. Or he may simply be tired and want to sleep until the bus reaches its destination.

He did not buy a sermon with his ticket. That is where the argument becomes interesting.
A preacher has a right to proclaim his faith. Does that automatically confer the right to impose the proclamation on every passenger within a confined space?

I think not.

The same principle applies when the preacher is replaced by a marketer. The commercial bus has become a remarkably convenient advertising platform. The seller boards with a bag of products, waits until the vehicle is moving and suddenly discovers an audience that cannot easily escape.

There is evidence that this is not a casual activity. Research into medicine vending inside Nigerian buses recorded numerous vending episodes and examined how vendors used the bus as a marketing environment. It also found significant gaps in the information supplied about some of the medicines being sold.

So the bus has become a captive market. The entrepreneur sees opportunity. The passenger sees a journey. Those interests do not always coincide.

For someone trying to earn a living without the capital to rent a shop, the bus may be one of the few available commercial spaces. We should not romanticise poverty, but neither should we pretend every hawker is a nuisance by choice. Yet livelihood cannot mean entitlement to another person’s attention.

The passenger who wants the product can buy it. The passenger who does not should be left alone.

Then comes the driver, around whom the road safety argument should really revolve. The existing regulations already prohibit obstructing or molesting a driver while the vehicle is moving. They also prohibit causing or permitting nuisance through preaching or hawking in a commercial vehicle while it is in motion.

That seems sensible.
But why have we chosen to frame the controversy principally as a war against preaching? A Nigerian commercial bus is already an astonishing laboratory of distraction. Loud music comes from the speakers. Phones ring. Conductors shout. Passengers argue. Somebody may be eating. Another is negotiating a fare. The driver may be listening to all of this while navigating potholes, motorcycles, trucks and the impatient fellow overtaking from nowhere.

If the real concern is distraction, let us regulate distraction.
If it is obstruction, regulate obstruction.
If it is harassment, regulate harassment.
Why should the state be concerned about whether the distraction carries the name of Jesus, a religious teaching, a herbal mixture or a packet of biscuits?

That is where the religious dimension becomes delicate. If Christians insist that preaching inside buses is protected religious expression, Muslims are entitled to exactly the same constitutional protection. The state cannot create a rule that is liberal when one faith is speaking and restrictive when another is speaking. The protection belongs to every person. That is why the sensible dividing line is not Christianity against Islam. It is conduct against disorder.

A Christian may preach. A Muslim may propagate his faith. A trader may offer his goods. But none should be entitled to turn a shared public vehicle into a captive audience, interfere with the driver’s concentration, obstruct movement or harass passengers.

The state should regulate the conduct, not the theology. That distinction matters because otherwise the legislation could produce precisely the confusion it claims to prevent.

Who enforces it?
The FRSC? The Police? A state traffic authority? An environmental agency if the complaint is noise? Or, God forbid, some NURTW official who suddenly discovers that he is the final authority on theology, commerce and road safety?

That is where a sensible regulation could degenerate into roadside commotion. One officer may arrest the preacher. Another may ignore the hawker. A transport union operative may intervene. The passenger may protest. The preacher will invoke the Constitution. The Muslim preacher will invoke the same Constitution. Before the bus reaches the next stop, everybody may have become a constitutional lawyer.

Nigeria does not need that circus. What it needs is a clear, neutral rule for shared public space. The preacher should be free to preach, but the passenger should be free not to listen. The trader should be free to make a living, but not by turning unwilling passengers into customers. Above all, the driver should be left to do the one job on which everybody in that vehicle has placed his trust: get them safely to their destination.

Perhaps that is where the argument should end. Not with a war between religion and regulation, but with the simple recognition that freedom becomes meaningful only when it leaves room for the freedom of the other person.

And if the law has been asleep since 2007, perhaps this time it should wake up with enough sense to know exactly what it is trying to stop.

Lanre Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, Former President Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists, writes from Abuja.