More on the okada ban
The more the days pass, the more ridiculously dictatorial the ban on motorbike taxis in Abuja seems. It was a win-win situation, providing jobs for the poor, and saving on footwear costs for the masses. The violent-sanitisation approach to Abuja is complete folly, especially given that a certain percentage of those now out of work will turn to crime. Where are all the buses? There only seems to be a handful at present. If there was going to be a ban, why was it not after there were adequate mass transit options, rather than before? The whole transition was poorly communicated and smacks of dictatorship rather than democracy. The people deserve respect, not autocracy.
A wiser strategy would have been to formalise the informal okada sector. This would involve licensing (which would enable the sector to be self-financed), MOT's on the bikes, the driver's taking a proficiency test, the insurance sector being brought in etc etc.
Policies which are based around poverty-hatred rather than poverty-alleviation, which are not focused on job-creation, are policies which will backfire in one way or another..
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5 comments:
sad. Is this okada ban in just Abuja or all over the country? I wonder how the powers-that-be expect ordinary people to get around? I know I would have been sorely stuck during my recent stay in Kano if not for the convenient achaba...
Okada are a nusiance in every sense. As they operate currently there is no win-win about them.
If you are in a car you are in danger as they have no idea how they should behave. If you are on the back of one you are liable to end up on the ground or under it!
A close friend of mine now has use of only one arm thanks to his brainless okada driver.
The sooner a practicle solution can be found to get them off the streets the better. Lagos is becoming even more of a nightmare because of their madness.
Maybe someone can come up with an effective, alternative transport system that will get rid of the requirement to use them.
Lagos has been threatening the "BRT scheme"....we have seen the now fading yellow lines on the road but no sign of a bus!
An alternative would lead onto the training, licensing, insuring and maybe behaving of those that are left.
Then again pigs might fly and we could ride on them instead!
Banning Okaka is not the bone of contention in my own opinion but will it be effective and be able to curb stealing and other atrocities in the crowded cities of Nigeria? N O-no- it will definitely not but put some poor fellows of these States in dilemma.
It is established that must civil-servants hawk with their okakas after closing hour as their salary and wages can only cater for their daily bread and they have thousands of things to settle at home as most of them have families raging from nuclear to polygamy and extended. They have to pay for their children’s school fees, buy them befitting clothe, even if it will be bought at Yaba or Katangua and also feed them. They have to contribute to the well being of their immediate and extended families and friends.
Our government ought to do more in the area of salary increment and job creation. And see maybe most of these poor people will not fleet away from the deadly okaka riding. It may also interest you to know that most of these riders are University graduates without tangible job. These set of people see the job in question as a rescue means.
Indeed, Okaka riders must be prosecuted but what about The Famous Once? I am quite sure that they will never say anything on this because they know who is who…let them come in the open and say they don’t or perhaps place ban on the nauseating hobby and see maybe their lives will not be in danger.
Please let me out of this. I have to catch up with my articles and my blog. But let it be in the history of this blog that Ayanda Abeke visited today.
I agree that okadas are a nuisance. I have a paranoia of driving, which is related to the traffic-law ignoring antics of the okada/achaba. I'm terrified that I will kill someone. However, some of the times I have been the most terrified have been when I was in the back of a car that was whipping around okadas--that is okadas are not the only ones breaking traffic laws. Cars are often pretty aggressive as well.
I know there is not an easy solution to this. I was told, whether urban legend or not, that hospitals in Kano have whole wings devoted to those injured in achaba accidents. I believe it.
Yet, this did not stop me from riding achaba. Why? Because where I lived in Kano, it was impossible to find any other kind of transport if one did not have a car, and I, and most of my neighbors, did not. If I wanted to catch a taxi or a daidai ta sahu (the little three-wheeled buggies reserved for the use of women in Kano), I would have to walk for 30 minutes to a main road and then wait for an available one to come along, which wasn't always very quickly. Usually (but not always), if I asked the achaba driver to be careful, he would be. "Don, Allah, ka yi hakuri. Bana son gudu."
So, I think there needs to be a better solution than an outright ban. Better liscensing, training, and policing, perhaps (although I can imagine many things going wrong with that too). But an outright ban puts millions of people out of transport. If this law also takes place in Kano (I haven't heard yet whether it is just Abuja or the whole country), how exactly are the people in my former neighborhood supposed to get places now?
cross river formalized their okadas. el rufia could learn a few things from Duke
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