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If you live in
Lagos or any of the major cities of
Nigeria, you will have something to say about commercial motorbikes or okadas, as they are popularly called. One way or the other, they must have altered your life or the life of someone you know – for good or for bad.
I have never stopped wondering what would have happened to the thousands of people who now find solace in eking out a living by owning or renting an okada to make money if there were no okadas. Sure enough, some of them are educated people who probably could not find any other thing to do to earn a living. Others are people who have either retired or were forcibly retired from paid employment. Yet some there are who are in this okada business to augment whatever pittance they get as wage or salary from their employers at the end of the day or month.
To many people, the okada business has brought some relief, even though it has not solved all their problems. And this is on the part of the okada owners, riders as well as commuters. If you live far away from the bus stop, all you need to do is take an okada to the bus stop, before boarding a bus to where you are going. If wherever you are going is not so far away, you can take a commercial motorbike, instead of trekking or taking a taxi. You can hop on an okada and let it take you all the way to where you are going, even if it is a long distance, if there is so much traffic congestion and you cannot afford to be late. At least, it will get you to your destination faster than driving a car or taking a bus. In fact, there is no disputing the fact that okadas have made life easy for so many people in so many ways.
On the other side of the coin, however, are the pains and tears the okada business has brought with it. Almost every other day, one sees, hears of or reads about an okada man being crushed to death with his passenger or maimed by a vehicle. A junior worker in my office had her husband, who had just bought an okada to augment his monthly income, thrown off the Gbagada bridge to the expressway below by a car. Of course, he did not live to tell the story.
According to Kalu Ogbonnaya, the Borno State Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), nationwide road accident records showed that most of them were caused by commercial motorcycles. In his words, “Most of the commercial motorcyclists are reckless and neither obey traffic rules nor adhere to safety precautions like wearing of helmets.”
That is however not denying the fact that there are some reckless vehicle drivers on the road who cause unnecessary accidents. But in most cases, you will discover that okada riders do not take time to learn how to ride motorbikes or understand traffic rules before getting on the road. Anyone who has enough money to buy a motorbike, or rent one, learns how to ride it while carrying a passenger. And the fact that licensing such riders does not seem to matter much to the government has not helped matters. What stops the government, for example, from insisting that okada riders must be tested on certain skills and licensed before they are allowed to get on the road or street? I know the
Lagos
State government tried to do that recently, but the voices of protesting okada riders drowned theirs.
I also know that the
Lagos
State government experimented with trying to get okada riders to wear helmets and buy same for their passengers. Again, they protested to the high heavens and the government backed out. If we know it is for their own good and for the good of everyone, I do not think we should feel intimidated addressing a problem once we identify it.
I am amazed every time I get to a traffic light or a roundabout and an okada gets in front of my car even when I am supposed to have right of way. And it is like that everywhere in
Lagos. Traffic rules just do not seem to apply to them. The fact that many of them get knocked down in similar situations do not seem to deter them. And whenever an accident involving them occurs, what you get is a mob action by all okada riders within that vicinity, whether or not they are wrong.
The sad thing is that they have taken this one step further – they have taken it to the expressways in
Lagos. I know, as a rule, they are supposed to operate only on streets and neighbourhoods. But the break-neck speed at which they ride and overtake fast-moving vehicles on the expressway nowadays is scary. Sometimes, you have your car flanked left and right by several okadas fighting for space and attention...on the expressway. And with the partitioning of some of these expressways to accommodate the BRT buses, there is really not much space left to manoeuvre. Yet, these okada riders will not consider the risk involved in competing with one another and other fast-moving vehicles on an expressway.
I know some have called for a total ban on the operations of okadas. But I do not think that is much of a solution. The number of people who will be thrown into the unemployment market, if that is done, will be overwhelming. But there is an urgent need to start regulating the activities of okada operators. We must begin to delineate the routes they can or cannot ply. We must ensure that anybody getting on the road as an okada rider has a fair knowledge of traffic rules. We must regulate the number of passengers they are allowed to carry. A situation where one motorbike carries three, four or five people and drives them to hell must not be allowed to continue. And we must begin to warn our policemen that whatever laws are enacted to regulate the okada business are not intended to make them rich.
And to think in Cotonou (in Republic of Benin, one of our neighbouring countries), where there are probably more commercial motorbikes than we have in our major cities, there is orderliness on their roads. Commercial motorcyclists stop at traffic lights, without being compelled to, and obey other traffic rules. I honestly do not see any reason why that cannot happen here.
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Authors 
Posted by Robot| 22.05.2008 13:26