The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has chided Lagos State government for proscribing operations of okada and tricycle riders in some local governments (LGs) and Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) of the state.
Mr. Debo Adeniran, CACOL’s Executive Chairman, in a statement signed by Adegboyega Otunuga, Coordinator, Media and Publications, on Thursday, said that problems associated with transportation in an ever-evolving mega city like Lagos, are too complex for such arbitrary approach.
Adeniran stated: “While we appreciate the flip side of condoning the operations of this mode of transportation in a largely cosmopolitan city like Lagos, we make bold to state that this path of resolving the crisis of transportation in Lagos was nothing new, even though each time respective governments in the state woke up to this realisation, it has yielded more pains than relief the law or policy set out to achieve for the teeming population of private and public workers and others in the state.
“The rationale for this controversy is not far-fetched as it simply shows that the ban failed to address the causative factors that are responsible for such needs in the first instance, while the approach towards taming the debilitating factors attendant to their operations are only always punitive to all parties, rather than broker relief to the ordinary Lagosians who struggle, daily, to navigate most of the deplorable roads in their cars or anxiously wait at different bus-stops endlessly for vehicles to convey them to their places of destination for their daily survival.”
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He maintained that the primary purpose of government at any level was for the security and welfare of majority of its people, hence governance must not at any rate be reduced to fire-brigade or reactionary arrangement, solely aimed at attracting attention to a burning fire without addressing the source and effective extermination of same.
He recalled that CACOL had earlier prescribed a holistic remedy to the incessant problems of traffic congestion, preventable road accidents, and even incidences of coveting same okada and Keke Marwa as avenues for getaway by criminals, could all be jointly addressed through an all-round conversation around them by veritable stakeholders, after which an effective and all-encompassing solution would have been arrived at.
Adeniran added: “Aside the fact that many children are today receiving education and surviving by such harrowing means in a nation that lacks social welfare for its citizens, its advent has also been responsible for reduction in rate of crime.
“This is not to say we could not regulate their operations while the state and federal governments tackle the general miasma that led to the need for their inevitability in the first instance.
“To all intent and purposes, motorcycles or tricycles are veritable means of transportation in most countries of the world; only thing is that, the traffic officers are more alive to their responsibilities than we are in ensuring that they, like trailer drivers, truck drivers and others adhere strictly to necessary traffic laws and are sanctioned where they willfully breach such.
“There are instances many heavy duty vehicles create avoidable danger/s to other road users than okada or Keke Marwa riders by parking indiscriminately or driving against traffic, etc. ‘One Chance and other robbery incidents are usually carried out by commercial car users/kabukabu, while there are no verifiable statistics that confirm that road accidents would suddenly disappear by eliminating these means of transport in Lagos.
“What all these show is that problems associated with transportation in an ever-evolving megacity like Lagos, is too complex for such arbitrary approach as evidences abound that even before the February 1, deadline given for the disappearance in most of Lagos roads, hijacking and destruction of their okada, Marwa tricycles and unbridled extortion have been the order of the day by law enforcement agents as we speak.”
