THE piece I’m reproducing below first appeared in this column about a year ago, precisely on Saturday, June 9, 2018. The decision to reproduce it is borne out of the relevance of the subject-matter as the new governor of Lagos State, Mr Babajide Sanwoolu, has made it clear that he is good to go as far as transportation and traffic management are concerned, in his bid to take the state to higher level.
The havoc terrible traffic situation wreaks on the state economy is better imagined. No one desirous of making Lagos a truly 21st Century economy can be indifferent to it and must, in reaction to it, think out a lasting solution. There can be no two ways to it than to deal a deadly blow to the menace of irresponsible driving on our roads, championed these days by okada (motorcycle) and marwa (tricycle) operators across the land.
Why should untrained and unlicensed riders be allowed free rein on our roads and on the expressway for that matter; riders who abhor wearing crash helmets and other body armour meant for their protection? If some people have chosen to commit suicide, shouldn’t the government of the day dissuade them from so doing? It is worse when these suicide-happy riders carry innocent passengers who are forced to patronise them in the absence of adequate and safer private and public transportation system.
It is commendable that the Sanwoolu administration is making transportation a cardinal point of its programme, and it behoves every citizen who loves responsible living and life to support its determination to restore normalcy to our roads where madness in drivers and riders behaviour is currently reigning supreme. Those who think that tricycle riders are better than okada riders must be people who have not experienced the CMD Road in Magodo and the absolutely intolerable attitude of marwa riders on a road where a vital training institution of the Federal Government and a crucial national security outfit are located.
Nobody who has lived or been to cities in the United Kingdom or Europe or America will not be livid seeing the grossly irresponsible and impatient manner drivers of tricycles meander through traffic on that axis where state, federal legislators, former governors and the nouveaux rich also reside.
Now, read the piece for its currency and topicality:
I have not set out to confuse, but I mean every word in the above headline because it is nothing but the truth.
Okada town in Ovia North East area of Edo State is unique and lovable. It is where one of the pioneer private universities in Nigeria, Igbinedion University, is situated. I am aware the Ugbowo campus of the University of Benin, the Usen Polytechnic and the College of Education in Adolor Ward are also located in that area.
Beyond all these is the Okada Wonderland which set out at inception with all the features of DisneyWorld in Florida, USA. To be sure, Okada Wonderland may not have all the facilities of DisneyWorld, but it has the unique flavour that will satisfy a fun-seeker. The flamboyant Gabriel Igbinedion, whose pictures adorn the shop of a jewellery and coral beads entrepreneur I once visited in an Italian city some years back, has his unique stamp to Okada. You can’t stop loving Okada anytime you visit.
I hesitantly don’t want to use the word ‘hate’ for the subject-matter of this piece today. But without hedging about it, I plainly loathe this ‘okada’ that set out to be the fastest means of transportation on our rusty and well-laid roads but is undeniably the fastest route to the untimely death of many in several parts of our nation today, especially Lagos, our window to the world.
On my return to the country after a near-decade sojourn abroad in 2008, I drove with my younger brother to a point near his site somewhere in Alimoso axis of Ikeja division of Lagos State. Getting to where gullies had overtaken roads built through communal effort, we had no choice but to park our vehicle and hop unto a motorcycle, popularly known as okada.
Two things struck a chord in me that I should quickly halt the ride and disembark: one, some tall people like me have phobia for heights, so I felt too tall up on the motorcycle, to the point of uncomfortability. Second, I knew from the way the okada rider was manoeuvring his machine that he was untrained/untutored to ride such a machine, and I wasn’t prepared to make myself a guinea-pig for experimentation.
Thanks to that intuitiveness and my blunt rejection of my brother’s plea to continue the ride, perhaps one won’t be alive today to give this testimony, as many had been sent to their early graves by these unlicensed but daredevil ‘murderers’, some of who had been forced into becoming okada riders by the harsh economic policies of government, which must be urgently addressed if there is no unpronounced plan by government to reduce our population through this callous elimination by untrained riders.
Government has a responsibility and duty to help preserve the lives of citizens, which is why the latest move in Lagos to begin a clampdown on okada riding on motorways or highways is most welcome. It is the irreducible minimum for government to ‘up’ its programme on providing safe, clean and affordable means of transportation to commuters, and the Ambode regime in Lagos, for example, is trying in that regard, especially with the new fleet of buses that are arriving in the city at the moment.
But until the refined public and private transportation policy fully matures, the state government MUST encourage okada riders away from all tarred roads and expressways and confine them to internal but untarred roads. Reason for this is that the okada riders tend to drive more recklessly on tarred roads than on untarred or rusty roads, thus increasing fatality rate on the highways. The laterite-covered roads, worsened by gullies created by erosion, have a salutary effect on the speed of okada, such that even if accidents occur on them, they are mostly not as fatal as the ones that occur on tarred and concrete roads.
This piece may be unpopular with okada riders but it will serve their own best interests in the end if they hearken to this, as their urge to make money to maintain themselves and their families fades off once they kill themselves through their own inexperienced driving and recklessness. The greater pity is that innocent rider-citizens are inevitably made to pay, to die untimely, along with them through okada.
See why I love Okada town and hate the other ‘okada’ whose operational modus fits into the fad of molue drivers on Ikorodu routes few years back, whose motor-boys, otherwise called conductors, bang the bodies of their vehicles at bus stops to invite commuters into them before shouting “k’owope, k’emi o s’ofo”, translated to mean “pay your fare and perish along the way.”
My sympathy for those who took to okada riding as a last resort after losing their jobs in several places, including banks. But shouldn’t all agree that tutorials in motorcycle riding is the first requirement before embarking on trading with it as a fast means of communication?
Two, if majority of okada riders, who are mostly people of northern origin, fled from the murderous Boro Haram kingpins in that part of the country, should they come to Lagos from the northern parts of Nigeria to come and commit suicide with their mode of riding okada, which has no parallel in the world? I honestly do not think so.
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