The chairman of the Lagos state House of Assembly Committee on Transportation, Hon Temitope Adewale representing Ifako Ijaiye I says ban on use of motorbikes on certain routes is in tandem with existing laws. He spoke with Tope Musowo.
What is your take on the policy statement of the governor restricting motorbikes and tricycles on Lagos major roads, based on the state transport law of August 2012 and the transport reform law of 2018?
I was part of the people that made the law and if the state House of Assembly passed the bill and it was signed into law I don’t think it is strange. In August 2012 the traffic law was made to ban motorcycles, I think it is very important to say this and to state clearly that misinterpretation of what is said or read cannot lead to misconception of the law. If we are saying we are restricting in some particular areas; the CBD’s and some volatile areas of the state, we have not said we banned totally bikes on the roads.
No bike has been completely taken off the road. What we just say is there are some parts of this state we don’t want motorbikes at the moment. So if the law was passed before and it worked very well then even in more stringent ways than now, we are saying let’s revisit the law because the last administration did not do much regarding the law and the transport sector.
Governor Babajide Sanwoolu has made it very clear that part of his agenda is improvement on transport sector and solution to traffic problems. It is not because he wants to witch-hunt anybody or he wants to put people who voted him into office out of jobs no. He is trying to make Lagos state safer and better to attain the mega city status.
Have you been to any general hospital lately or the orthopedic hospital? You will weep. There are lots of innocent lives that have been destroyed by these riders. That is why we are restricting them. And we are saying that operation of motorbike has to be properly regulated. You can’t have people just come in from wherever to operate motorbike business just because there is a free access or movement to live anywhere in the country.
So you come to Lagos on Friday and by Monday pick up a bike and begin to operate. There are laws: You must have a rider’s tag, your bike must be properly registered. These laws have not been followed. The e-commerce industry, the likes of the opay, gokada, gomax and the rest of them, they are not registered.
Politicians have often been accused of deliberately relaxing laws when elections are close and enforcement barely swings to full force when elections are over?
Let’s put it this way, the last administration went into the waste management body to infuse some few rapid changes, do test-run and some few experiments regarding the environmental laws which brought about the Vision Scape concept and it backfired.
It didn’t work properly and we started witnessing what we saw as far back as 1998, when we had dirts all over the place. We had refuse dumped in the middle of the roads, you don’t see them today they all gone. LAWMA is working efficiently because when laws are put in place and they are stringent repercussions for breaking the law, is proper enforced, it worked.
So Governor Babajide Sanwoolu is looking into the transport law and had made it clear that he would address the transport sector, then it is important for us to do it. If the last government had made it easy by restricting LASTMA from doing its duties and taking off the powers that allows them to operate and arrest and then we had more traffic situations and you would realise that the past administration did not do much in that sector.
The governor is only reacting to the yearnings of the people and he wants to improve the situation because traffic jams is caused by human and vehicular movements. And who are those behind the vehicular movements? It is we.
What are In essence the ban is a proactive step or what ?
bikes doing on highways and bridges? The heavily populated major roads with speed limits, the people actually do that every day. Have they been banned on inner roads? I stay in Ifako Ijaiye and I enjoy taking bikes, because there are distances I can’t walk. I take a bike from my house to the nearest bus stop, sometimes I can ply a bike from Iju to Ogba. I went through the road, yes it is part of the roads I have been plying, but because I felt I need to get to where I am going faster or the ease of me not having to queue at the bus stop, then I take a bike but readily available for us are buses.
I am not trying to defend the government at the same time the people, I am just saying the truth the way it is. In essence if I am supposed to get to an appointment by two o’clock and I know the transport structure and understand how it works why would I want to leave 1:30, when I can leave by 12:30? Now, the human factor also comes to play here.
So if I am supposed to get to somewhere by 2pm and I leave 12o’clock, by the time I walk 15 minutes to the bus stop, I would use another 15 minutes to get me there bearing in mind the travel time plus or minus traffic. Without the bikes before we were living and doing fine, we never get late. Some of the chaotic traffic situations on our trunk A roads are caused by bikes: hit one bike man using one way, risking the lives of passengers and you being on your lane would be visited by mob action. They’ve beaten so many LASTMA officials for attempting to correct them. They usually caused mayhem because the trade is not properly regulated, and until the regulation is done we will continue to have restricted on the roads that are very volatile. That is the situation at the moment.
If insufficient and inadequate roads are the major traffic issues, why then ban use of motorbikes- Okada?
You see when we are about to start something, the moment it favours people in terms of test-run,they run away with it
There are transport sector laws, there is transport reform law, there are laws that would enable you to start businesses within the state, when you want to test the waters just like you had the ‘Uber’. Uber came and ran on our water ways as a test-run, now they are in the process of getting approval and it worked.
It is the same governor that said he is going to work with all these branded organizations of motorbikes, equally he is would be working with gokada,gomax,opay, and they all went to him and he was impressed. It is a welcome idea and an integral part of the transportation system.
I have read people commenting about bikes in Singapore, yes Singapore is a country not a state, there are bikes in Kano and Kaduna so if we insist we don’t want bikes in particular local governments for now, it is because we are trying to regulate it. There are bikes that would run only strictly within gated estates, they are not banned, there are bikes that would run inner roads, they are not banned. Restriction means we don’t want you here at all until things are being perfected. Perfect the law, perfect your documentations, and then we give you rules and regulations to abide by.
There are rules and regulations and memorandum of understanding that have to be respected. What the transport law said is that you must have a proper registration before operating. However, the decisions made are between the operators and the ministry of transportation and it is beyond legislative duties. Ours is to make laws- the regulations; how they do it has to do with the ministry but what I am saying to you is that once all the necessary documentations are done I am sure they can find a way out.
I heard some commentators said once they take out the bikes that crime rate will increase. Nobody is taking out the bikes, we are restricting and they are saying that a lot of people would lose their jobs. No they won’t lose their jobs, nobody is taking away their bikes from them, just change your routes from now and then when you meet up with the standards of what you are expected to do, the restrictions are opened to allow you operate in those areas.
In the UK, there are areas referred to as green zones, there are areas where you can’t even go. There is tax charges on this area and you know with what the government is working towards the ITS -Integrated Transport System, I will appeal to Lagosians to please be patient and trust for once the process of getting things done for Lagos by the state government.
