Reports of road crashes involving motorcyclists popularly called okada is a menace that the government must face with urgent attention. Majority of road crashes and accidents that happened on the roads are either caused by okada or involved one. This has led most states across the country to legislate the ban of commercial motorcycling.
In Lagos state, the Sanwo-Olu government announced restriction on okada and tricycles in six local government areas in the state in January 2020. The government claimed that over 11,000 persons have been killed between 2011 and 2019 and another report by the state revealed that 600 deaths were recorded between 2018 and 2019 in the state. All attributed to operatives of motorcycles.
Also, most states in the north have also banned the use of motorcycle for commercial purposes. The likes of Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Plateau and a host of others have banned it for commercial purposes while some others like Sokoto, Jigawa and Zamfara try to regulate the operations of the cyclists.
In spite these measure by the states, casualties continue to rise as a result of the operations of the cyclists who are majorly illiterates and have little or no road safety knowledge.
For the Federal Road Safety Corps, the remedy to the menace is outright ban of okada across the country. The Corp in its recommendation in the October Road Traffic Crash (RTC) Report 2016, submitted that commercial motorcyclist remained a major cause of fatal road traffic accidents across the country.
The RTC statistics for October 2016, shows that 230 cases or 18 percent of a total of 1,259 vehicles were involved in accidents within the month, the majority were commercial motorcycles.
According to the report, motorcycle accidents ranked third after cars which accounted for 457 cases or 36 percent, followed by minibuses with 243 or 19 percent of the total. The Corps advised that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation should facilitate and encourage state governments to ban the use of motorcycle for commercial purpose.
Also in 2014, the National Council on Transport recommended the ban nationwide in order to ensure adequate provision of safe and secure means of transportation in the country.
While the ban may look like the only remedy, it is important that the government may be throwing away the baby with the bathing water. Raw observation shows that majority of the operators have no knowledge of the road safety law. The government should therefore mandate that operators should be literate on traffic rules and strict enforcement of this should be the responsibility of the FRSC.
For Nigeria where the level of unemployment has pushed many Nigerian youths into commercial motorcycling, a ban would only trigger a much more worse monster in the society.
