To tackle the traffic challenge, the government is promoting bicycle riding as a safe and reliable means of transportation, reports ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE.
WHEN in 2001, former Transport Minister Chief Ojo Maduekwe rode on a bicycle to the Federal Executive Council, (FEC), meeting in Abuja, many saw it as a publicity stunt. They referred to him as Ojo oni keke (Ojo the cyclist). But Maduekwe had something else in his mind – the use of bicycle to get out of the perennial gridlock on the roads.
The former minister cited China, Holland and Cuba, as countries where bicycles are central to transportation. He said the then Federal Government had concluded plans to embark on massive importation of bicycles for use nationwide.
Undaunted that he was alone in his campaign, Maduekwe did not relent until an accident on his way to the FEC meeting in June 2001, put paid to the dream.
The arguments on the desirability or otherwise of bicycle as a means of transportation, especially in urban centres and the nation’s megalopolis, have never really gone away.
Former Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Mr Osita Chidoka, picked up the gauntlet over a decade later.
But again, the campaign did not sell. Respondents in a poll conducted by the Guardian Opinion Poll (GOP) at the time, involving 1,200 respondents in 24 states across the six geo-political zones, rejected the proposal. Majority of the 744 respondents or 62.0 percent condemned the initiative as an idea that would take the country back to the Stone Age. They claimed that Nigerian roads are not safe for bicycle riding.
The GOP survey further showed 260 respondents or 21.7 per cent supported the bicycle not only as a substitute for car, but as an alternative means of transportation. Bicycle, they argued, is not only economical, it is also a means to keep fit and healthy.
Same arguments
These were the same arguments canvassed by the Federal Government, when it again called for the adoption of bicycle, “as a safe means of road transportation.”
It said the use of bicycles will improve the efficiency of the nation’s roads.
Handing down the recommendation was Mr. Dauda Kigbu, the Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Works, at the international conference organised by the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute, a parastatal of the Ministry of Science and Technology, last week.
At the conference, which held in Abuja, with the theme, Roadmap to safe, efficient and sustainable road transportation in Nigeria, Kigbu said, “While the Federal Government would continue to make efforts to improve the efficiency and performance of the nation’s roads, it must not shy away from exploring and introducing innovative initiatives aimed at optimising road transportation.
“Some of these initiatives may include promoting the use of bicycle as a formidable and safe means of road transportation and integrating it into the national road transportation system.
“Other initiatives Kigbu listed were the incorporation of pedestrian, bicycle and motorcycle lanes into road designs to encourage it for future planning.”
The new agitation, according to Kigbu, cannot be divorced from the worsening mortality rate of road crashes. He said Nigeria holds the unenviable record of the nation with the most unsafe roads in the West African sub-region with deaths arising from accidents in 2010 put at 33.7 per cent per 100,000 population, while the figure was 6,544 of all traffic accidents in 2013. Within the same period, injuries recorded also averaged 40,000.
Though the fatality figure might not have been this scary some 15 years ago when Maduekwe championed the bicycle culture, as his own alternative to perennial fuel scarcity, everything points to the fact that it might continue to skyrocket if left unchecked.
An industry in limbo
Nigerians were neither entirely averse to, nor strangers to the bicycle. Older Nigerians recall with nostalgia that the bicycle was a part of the nation’s social fabric and growth. In the villages and the emerging urban centres, the bicycle was in fact the exclusive preserve of the elites who were then either merchants, (euphemism for traders), or teachers, or students. It represented the main means of mobility for the elites of the 60s and early 70s.
Major bicycle producers such as Raleigh, moved their assembly plants into Nigeria, as the nation became a major hub for the West African market. But with the oil boom, and a more liberalised economy, the taste for luxury goods by Nigerians went skywards and different makes of imported vehicles replaced the reliable bicycle and motorcycles.
One man who still relishes those “old times” was Isiaka Idris, whose dad started the bicycle retailing business in the 50s. “My father was one of the earliest retailers of bicycle in the entire Agege and on his demise, I and my siblings decided to continue the business,” he told The Nation.
Idris, who takes his stocks from importers on Lagos Island, has a massive shop at Isale Oja, Agege. He said the market had been a little bearish lately, adding that hardly is he selling up to 20 bicycles monthly. In the past few years, he was selling more than 40 bicycles weekly and an average of 100 monthly. Those were days when customers usually come from as far as Badagry and Benin Republic even Togo to buy from us, but now, the buyers’ traffic had reduced and we only have people who wanted to buy for personal use or for their children.
Another bicycle trader, who sells at Egbeda, a Lagos suburb, who identified himself as Sunday confirmed that market had been dull lately. His monthly sales of 80, he said, has dropped to 20, yet, he said he would not contemplate a change of business which has been his mainstay since 1990.
Idris and Sunday believe both the federal and the state governments can help stimulate the business by putting in place a policy that would demand a return to the biking culture.
“We sell bicycles and accessories and even repair them, but the government must come to our aid by making the economy healthier,” Idris enthused.
He said the bicycle market would continue to grow despite the glut and the seeming unfriendly disposition of the government because a lot of people are beginning to see it as an alternative to motorised vehicles.
“Bicycles are cost effective; its services are cheaper and doesn’t require fueling neither does it constitute any hazard to the environment. Besides these economic advantages, bicycles also promote good health as it is a form of aerobic exercise needed for the effective body locomotion,” Idris said.
The Lagos example
One of the major fears against the acceptance of the use of bicycles was the bad state of roads and the risky nature of riding on such roads amid unpredictable recklessness of motorists.
However, with a population of 20 million and still growing, no state has grappled with the burden of resolving the challenges of traffic gridlocks on its roads better than Lagos.
A strong advocate of the green culture, the former Lagos State Governor Mr Babatunde Fashola, was not only a promoter of biking, but had even canvassed trekking where the distance is short, to riding in vehicles.
Successive Commissioners of Transportation in the state have also canvassed the use of bicycle as a safe form of transportation within the metropolis, which explains why the Lagos Traffic Law, passed three years ago, was silent on restricting bicycles from all roads outside all the major highways.
The government also took the lead by creating a pilot bicycle lane on two road projects – one at Yaba and at Wempco Road, off Agidingbi, in Ikeja, the state capital, with a promise to deliver more bicycle compliant roads to the people.
With the bicycle lanes, biking enthusiasts, have exclusive use of a pavement dedicated to bicycles, while the pedestrian walkways were identified as possible routes for bike users where no bike lanes exists.
Growing biking
enthusiasts
Isaac, a staff of Boulos Enterprises, is one enthusiast who is happier, having found the option in biking last year. He told his story: “When I got the job at Boulos, my major headache became how to be getting to work by 7am. Initially, I used to wake up 5am, and would leave my house at Alagbado, an Ogun State suburb by 5.30am, yet, would not get to the office until 8.30am. Returning was worse, no day passed that I got home earlier than 12am.
“Then I was miserable, until I bought a bicycle last year. Since then, I stopped leaving so early. I can now afford to leave my house by 6am, and I still get to work by 7am.” He however said riders must be careful and know the traffic regulations.
He said besides himself, another staff, who lives at Ogba, in Ifako-Ikaiye council area of Lagos, has joined the cycling culture.
“Both of us park our bicycles, lock them and get to work. After work, we go back to our bicycles and jump on them and ride home,” Isaac said.
Biking in other cultures
New York City has doubled its bike lane networks since 2006, bringing the total mileage to more than 400. Most bike lanes are selected for installation, based on the Department of Transportation’s 1997 Bicycle Master Plan.
New York has some of the most innovative bike lane designs in the USA, including physically-separated cycle-tracks (8th Avenue, 9th Avenue and Broadway in Manhattan), parking-protected bike lanes (Grand Street in Manhattan) and two-way separated lanes (Prospect Park West and Kent Avenue in Brooklyn).
A publication called biking rules by Transportation Alternatives (T.A.), an American online community of cycling enthusiasts, said for streets to be safe and welcoming to cyclists, the addition of bike lanes is essential.
Besides a dedicated space for cyclists, all street users must be educated about a cyclist’s right to the road, and create a safer roadway by calming traffic. That is where the challenge is the stiffest for Nigeria, just aspiring to join the league of bicycle users.
Benefits
Though a larger percentage of Nigerians would want the idea of bicycle riding shelved permanently, a safety expert Mr Patrick Adenusi said bicycle riding remains a very significant mode of transportation that cannot but be incorporated into the nation’s transportation masterplan.
According to Adenusi, bicycling besides being a cheaper means of transportation, would help our health, arrest environmental pollution and reduce congestion on the roads.
He said: “If eventually approved, I would be happy that Nigeria would be finally joining the rest of the world and especially countries where biking is complementing transportation systems. The rate of cardiac arrests would be reduced as we would be able to exert and burn off excess fats that are constituting a challenge to our health. “We are likely going to see a reduction in incidences of pot-bellied men as starchy foods and fats we consume would have be burnt off.”
Adenusi the Executive Director of Safety Without Borders (SWB) listed other benefits of the adoption of bicycles to include an increase in our purchasing power as more people would have more money to spend that were hitherto consumed by the servicing and other unforeseen expenses inherent in the use of vehicles. “Governments would also have more money to allocate to other sectors as the roads would last longer and maintenance cost would be heavily reduced. The bicycle manufacturers are also likely going to make a return to the country to set up assembly plants which would eventually create more jobs and reduce the menace of unemployment in the economy.
“I look forward to seeing this policy implemented and Nigerians encouraged to use the bicycles, so that we can begin to use and experience this new change and lifestyle,” he said.
