Lagos Okada ban: Cutting the nose to spite the face

Lagos state government had a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. It opted for the devil. That is what the decision to ban the operation of tricycles and commercial motorcycles in some urban areas of the state amounts to. Allowing them to operate is evil. Banning them without option is even worse.

Ironically, in a country where traffic offenders are still being chased with truncheons, the restriction would fizzle out within months as traffic controllers turn it to ATM.

Commercial motorcycle and tricycle operators constitute a thorn in the flesh of the state government, commuters and motorists alike. They are impatient, indolent and irritably cantankerous. They ride against traffic, kill and maim scores mercilessly.

Mrs. Funmi Alao, a colleague’s wife who was moving mountains in Vanguard Newspapers as an advert executive was mowed down in 2006 by a commercial motorcyclist racing against traffic. She died instantly. Thousands have followed Mrs. Alao in the last 13 years.

The tricycles have carved out a third lane for themselves on all the streets they operate. Motorists have no option than to obey the Hammurabi laws they have enacted.

Commercial motorcycles have become powerful tools in the hands of criminals.

 Their riders meander through the deplorable roads at five times the speed of cars and get out before anyone could stop them. That ease of movement by the motorcycles make them very effective in robbery and kidnapping operations which have becoming so alarming since Nigeria’s unemployment rate entered double digits.

But society appreciates them even for their nuisance value. The commercial motorcycles tackle two major problems that successive governments created in the last 30 years. They convey commuters to areas where the roads are too bad for buses to enter.

Perhaps the most important of their nuisance value is in tackling Nigeria’s 50 per cent youth unemployment. A good percentage of the tricycle and commercial motorcycle riders are university graduates who have paraded the streets for almost a decade without job. Three months ago, my younger brother took a ride on a commercial motorcycle operated by a chartered accountant. When he established the young man’s identity he collected his CV and started a futile search for job for the gentleman.

The other operators are frustrated, unskilled adults and thousands of young men displaced by the insurgency in the north east.

The decision of the state government to restrict this form of transportation system is a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea because either of the choices is calamitous.

Commercial motorcycles have become powerful tools in the hands of criminals. Armed robbers and kidnappers use them to beat traffic as they flee the scene of crime.

That is part of the argument of the state government in its decision to clamp down on the commercial cycles. Unfortunately, the decision could as well be counter-productive.

The robberies and kidnappings that the state government hoped to curtail with the ban would almost certainly escalate as close to one million operators are thrown into the nation’s boisterous job market. Many of them would resort to crime.

Even Go Kada, a commercial motorcycle network that was almost contesting the market with Uber and Bolt was not spared the state government hammer despite the fact that it was duly registered. Thousands of power bikes operated by the network are now redundant.

The company has retrenched 70 per cent of its white collar workers and converted 20 bikes to courier service now being experimented as survival strategy. The wailings and gnashing of teeth by the operators and commuters has become unbearable in a country that does not care about its compatriots. No one knows the way out of the quagmire.

Perhaps the biggest casualties of the decision by Lagos State government to restrict tricycles and commercial motorcycles to some rural communities in the state are millions of commuters who use them to and from work.

The suffering was so unbearable in the first week of the restriction that commuters were heard openly cursing the rulers of Lagos state for subjecting them to untold torments.

The restriction by the state government had all the trappings of the fire brigade approach to problems by a typical Nigerian government. The state government had no plan for the cruel consequences of the decision.  There were no options to the mode of transport that was outlawed.

What looked like options were in the wrong places and were unsuitable mode of transportation. The state government replaced almost one million tricycles and commercial motorcycles with 65 BRT buses and a handful of ferry boats.

None of the BRT buses could ply the crammed and narrow streets operated by the outlawed tricycles and commercial motorcycles.  Of course no one expected frustrated commuters heading to work at Ikeja GRA to board the ferry boats deployed to Apapa and Mile Two. The boats were useless to millions of stranded commuters.

The ferries and the BRT buses were grossly inadequate and absolutely irrelevant to the problem created by the state government.  It makes more sense to replace the tricycles with micro buses.

If the state government had ordered 2, 000 Suzuki micro buses and sold to operators at hire purchase before the ban was imposed, the suffering by commuters would have been reduced drastically.

The irony of the restriction of the two modes of transportation is that the state government has no viable mass transit plan.

Lagos is probably the only mega city in the world where all modes of land transportation is on the road. It simply cannot work. If anyone plans to buy enough BRT buses that would move 20 million people around the state, there would be no road for the buses and other vehicles to pass. There would just be too many vehicles on the few roads.

Government can only tackle Lagos chaotic transportation problem by developing a metropolitan rail system that would at one instance move the number of passengers that 50 BRT buses would carry.     

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