By Afolagbi Aribigbola

|

An ugly phenomenon playing out in Nigerian cities is the prevalence of the use of motorcycles popularly known as Okada for commercial purposes in most of the Nigerian cities. Everywhere one turns to in the country is the suffocating presence of motorcycles in all the available spaces causing one form of havoc or the order. In this context, if the motorcyclists are not engaged in physical combat with other road users, they will engage themselves with confrontation leading to traffic problems including accidents and avoidable deaths.
The introduction of commercial motorcycles in several parts of Nigeria, was for ameliorative purpose to fill a gap in transport infrastructure supply. Initially, they were introduced in very remote areas where motor vehicles cannot reach and rural areas where motor cars are not readily available. Therefore, in order to ease movement of people, goods and services in areas where conventional public transport were not available, they were introduced.
However, a curious observation of the prevailing transportation situation in the entire country revealed that commercial motorcycle have become more dominant and in many cases are the only means of travels across several areas of the country. As earlier mentioned, their initial activities were restricted to remote areas that were not easily accessible by vehicles. Nowadays, their operations and services have extended beyond rural areas to the heart of our cities. They are now found everywhere including the major highways or expressways where they should not be found in the first instance.
Whilst the introduction and use of motorcycles for commercial purposes were product of necessity, they have grown in leaps and bounds beyond their original sphere of needs or operations to all parts of the country including densely built cities causing a lot of confusion and crises. This later development requires attention of all stakeholders of Nigerian project.
Though commercial motorcycles’ operations have become inevitable in contemporary Nigeria because of the failure of public transport services including taxis, buses, and rail services to meet the need of the growing population of Nigerians especially in our cities to commute within the cities and even between cities and the villages. Also, they gain wider acceptance due to the failure of governments in the country to provide the needed transport infrastructure in all parts of the country to make acceptance and use of commercial motorcycle to be more popular and more extendedly embraced.
The patrons and habitual users of commercial motorcycles will contend that it is faster and easily available to reach all parts of the cities than other means of movement therefore will prefer to use it. In sum commercial motorcycles offers door to door services that makes for convenience which other means of movement cannot provide.
Indeed, as infallible and plausible the reasons put forward to justify the prominence and popularity of commercial motorcycles in urban transportation in the country, their use have been known to create or become a veritable source of danger and accidents resulting in destruction of precious lives. Suffice it to say many lives have been lost and many maimed due to their dangerous activities.
One of the fallouts of proliferations of commercial motorcycle operations is constant accidents. Majority of the operators of commercial motorcycles are youths who came into the trade without any training and therefore everywhere and everyday cause traffic accidents. Many of these fatal accidents resulted in loss of several lives. Proliferation of motorcycles causes pollution and destruction of the ambience urban environment in the country.
Wherever the operators of commercial motorcyclists congregate, the area are usually rowdy and rough and always poor to behold. It has been noted and argued that commercial motorcyclists aid and facilitate robberies including armed robbery. They aid in easy escape of robbers and many of them have been caught in snatching of ladies’ bags and phones while pretending to be operators of commercial motorcycles.
In addition, motorcyclists collective damaging behaviour is another problem facing the Nigerian society by operators of commercial motorcycles operators. Thus, where they congregate serve venues for propagation and use of illicit as well as indulge in drug abuse and widespread smoking of Indian helm.
It should be noted that as bad and dangerous as the commercial motorcycles to enhance movements of people in the country, especially the downtrodden, they have their positive side of facilitating easy and fast movement of many people especially where public transport are not readily available and in rural areas where there are no roads and where the roads are in very bad and not motorable throughout the year.
The above presentation is indicative of the serious danger associated with the introduction and proliferation of commercial motorcycles in Nigeria. The need to control and possibly stop their use becomes indispensable and should be vigorously pursued. Afterall in the more prosperous cities of Europe and America, commercial motorcycle as a means of transportation is not in operation. To achieve this, the various governments need to improve and develop mass transit facilities and services that can move people around our cities.
There is a need to discourage the use of commercial motorcycles in the cities by educating the people about the dangers inherent in their operations. Again, if and where they must be used, separate routes should be developed for them like it is obtainable in some countries and they should be properly trained and registered. A situation where all commers are allowed to engage in commercial motorcycle operation without adequate training will continue to unleash more harm on more Nigerians through avoidable accidents as well as exposure to drug abuse that is prevalent among them.