No Nigerian operator publishes a connecting fare. If your journey needs two buses, the network expects you to work that out yourself, at the park, on the day. Building it in software sounds like a routing problem and mostly is not: the hard part is throwing away the enormous number of pairings that are technically valid and useless in practice.
Key takeaways
- 1,701 scheduled legs pair up 395,624 different ways.
- Four rules cut that to 285,157 real options.
- Only 13,262 of those — about 5% — can be done without an overnight wait.
- The binding constraint is not distance. It is whether you can physically get from one terminal to the other in the time available.
Rule one: a leg has to leave its state
The rule that matters most is the dullest. A search for Lagos to Nnewi was once answered with a ₦100, thirty-minute hop from Yaba to Ikotun bolted onto a long-haul service — two Lagos addresses, presented as the first stage of a journey to Anambra. Worse, the legs did not meet: one landed at Ikotun and the next left from Ejigbo.
Only 16 of 1,701 scheduled legs stay inside a single state, so this rule discards very little. It removes the results that made the whole feature look untrustworthy.
Rule two: the terminals have to be near each other
Nigerian operators do not share terminals. A change at Owerri means arriving at one company's park and leaving from another's, and the distance between them is the difference between a connection and a wasted day. We measure it from the terminal coordinates: the median gap across all viable connections is 9.3km, and anything beyond 25km is treated as two separate trips rather than one journey.
This is the single largest filter. 62,346 pairings fail on distance alone.
Rule three: there has to be time to make it
A connection is only real if you can catch it. We require 45 minutes as a floor — getting off, collecting luggage, finding the next park — plus four minutes for every kilometre between the terminals, which is roughly what a keke averages across a Nigerian city in daylight. A same-terminal change needs 45 minutes; a 1.4km change across Owerri needs 51.
These are scheduled times, not guarantees, which is exactly why the floor is generous. A bus leaving Aba at 05:30 will not reliably reach Owerri at 06:30, and a thirty-minute connection built on that assumption is a missed bus and a second ticket.
Rule four: rank what is left
Surviving the rules does not make a connection good. Most do not: the median wait across every valid pairing is 15h 30m, because the second service frequently runs the following morning. Ranking is what makes the set usable. A comfortable wait sorts above a tight one, a long layover is penalised, distance between terminals is penalised, and the shortest total day breaks the tie.
What is deliberately not a factor is whether both legs are the same company. 71% of viable connections change operator, and a change between two carriers whose terminals are next door beats a single-carrier change across town.
The funnel
| Stage | Count | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled legs on the index | 1,701 | |
| Legs that stay inside one state | 16 | Rejected as city shuttles |
| Interstate legs available to connect | 1,685 | |
| Ways two legs could be paired | 395,624 | |
| Pairs that end where they started | 42,958 | Rejected |
| Pairs whose terminals are over 25km apart | 62,346 | Rejected |
| Pairs with too little time to change | 5,163 | Rejected |
| Connections that survive every rule | 285,157 | |
| Of those, changes you can make the same day | 13,262 |
What the numbers say about the network
A five percent survival rate into same-day travel is not a failing of the algorithm. It is a description of the network: services are timed around each operator's own trunk routes, not around meeting each other. Nobody is scheduling for interchange because nobody has been able to see it. We look at that gap in why intercity bus is Africa’s least digitised transport market.
See the connections on your route. Transita builds them from the live schedule, not from a brochure.
Frequently asked questions
How does Transita build a connecting bus journey?
By pairing scheduled legs that each cross a state line, whose terminals are within 25km of each other, and where the wait clears 45 minutes plus four minutes per kilometre between those terminals. What survives is then ranked so the most comfortable change appears first.
Why do you not show a 30 minute connection?
Because the times are the operator’s schedule, not a promise. Thirty minutes to cross a city between two companies’ terminals is a missed bus and a second ticket for a large share of travellers.
Do both buses have to be the same company?
No. 71% of viable connections change operator. What matters is the distance between the two terminals and the time available, not the name on the bus.
