In the last count, between 3,000 and 5,000 commercial motorcycles, popularly called okada, have been crushed by the Lagos State Government, in the last three months, at the Special Task Force crushing plant in Alausa, Ikeja, the state capital.
Half of that had been done in the first two weeks of the total ban on okada in six local governments and nine Local Council Development Areas of the 57 councils in the state to ensure that the impounded machines did not find their way back on the roads.
For a state which unofficial statistics is about 10 million motorcycles, the figures of the crushed okada are, at best, insignificant. They become more scary if they tallied with those who, daily, slipped into the state from its porous borders in the guise of coming to the nation’s economic capital to eke out a living.
The war to bring okada operators under some regulation had been over a decade old in the state. Though okada operation became a major menace in the onset of the Fourth Republic as politicians made it a major pillar in their youths’ empowerment agenda, distributing motorcycles and helmets with fanfare, it soon became a huge challenge at the turn of the first decade of the new millennium as various tertiary health institutions started opening special wards for okada-related accidents, which, at its peak, in 2011, averaged over two million accidents monthly. Though efforts to regulate their operation were initially challenged in 2011, by the following year, the government, under the Lagos State Traffic Regulation Law (as amended in 2018), succeeded in bringing their operation under control, and restricted their operation from bridges, highways, and over 590 roads within the state.
The government also restricted its movement in six local governments, which became the pilot phase of the law, meant to cover the state.
The government recorded some success up to 2014, but the gains were reversed between 2015 and 2019. The Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration, however, revisited the restriction.
As one of the activities marking its 100th day in office, it not only returned to the law, but banned it outright, including new e-hailing okada transit investors, who had been edging on the enveloping traffic gridlock to provide transit alternative to traumatised residents. The government left only those in the logistics/dispatch sub-sector.
The law banning their operation in 15 pilot councils was a response to the growing threats of insecurity and the danger that unbridled okada operation constitutes in the state. Besides insecurity, there is an increase in the profile of okada-related crimes, especially around the many dark spots within the megapolis.
But has the ban been successful? Many Lagosians would argue that it has since been a return to the old ways, as the operators are back on the banned roads and are one-a-kobo even in the affected LGs and LCDAs.
Very conspicuous are the operators at Ikeja Along, a major axis and focus of the TaskForce way back in June. Okada operators work in most of these places not only under the cover of the night, but even in the day. At the said Ikeja Along, they are found with impunity even on the restricted BRT Lane.
In most places, enforcement, Lagosians are wont to agree, lasted only in June and, thereafter, it has been a return to breaches.
Olajide Adeyemo, a resident, argued that enforcement agents didn’t attempt to prove him wrong. Back in June, he had argued in an interview with The Nation, that enforcement would only last between 60 and 90 days and it would be a return to the old ways.
“I said, then, that being close to election cycle, and knowing the way of the government, enforcement would be relaxed as we get close to the campaign period and it is not in doubt that just as we are seeing here in Ikeja, other areas, where the ban has been in place, like Surulere, Yaba, Eti-Osa, Apapa, and others, the operators are back on the road.”
