Rotimi Fasan
6 January 2009
Lagos — TWO thousand and nine might turn out a good year for motorists and other road users in Nigeria. This is not just a hope, it is also a prayer.
It is no news that Nigeria has one of the highest rates of road accidents in the world. Up until the last few days of 2008 media reports suggested that the accident rate might have assumed the complexion of an epidemic around the country.
Indeed the roads seemed particularly famished in the last few hours of the past year as news poured in from around the country of road and other kinds of domestic accidents, all pointers to failure in governance.
Yet any account of road accidents in Nigeria will not be complete without a prominent place being given to motorcyclists, especially the commercial arm called okada. Okada and their riders are as popular as they are notorious.
The popularity of okada stems from their being a fast means of movement on unbearably crowded roads.
Their notoriety stems from their riders' reckless disregard of most traffic rules, a fact which accounts for the terribly high rate of accidents among this army of mostly youthful Nigerians betrayed by an economic system whose failure can be read in the double digit rate of unemployment in the country.
The casualty rate among users and riders of okada is now so high that it is believed that the accident and emergency units of most hospitals now have special wards reserved for them. Cases of broken craniums, bones, rib cages and other fractures are testimonies to the danger that okada constitutes as a means of transport.
Yet Nigerians must move if they must live. But to protect us from ourselves (or so it would seem) and in our usual manner of advancing in circles, the FRSC, the arm of government responsible for matters of this nature, decided to re-introduce and enforce (hopefully with success this time) an ancient regulation that goes back to the 1970s, perhaps earlier, requiring the use of crash helmets for riders (owners and passengers alike) of motorcycles. The regulation came into effect on the first day of January 2009 and already there are oppositions to it across the country from those it is meant to serve.
While some of them deplore the cost of obtaining the helmets (between N2,500 and N4,000 each) others simply couldn't see the need for it; but both groups are united in their demand that the FRSC postpone its implementation of the regulation. The full implementation of the helmet regulation might help reduce the casualty rates on our roads.
This is the good thing about the regulation. But the re-introduction of this regulation which first came into effect at a time there were far fewer vehicles on our roads and motorcycles were largely meant for private as opposed to commercial use amounts to a pathetic surrender to the transportation challenges of this country and an admission of failure by the state that Nigeria's transport policy (if there is anything like that), in the last 48 years of independence, has failed.
Motorcycles have now been officially sanctioned as a means of transportation in Nigeria. This is a clear case of regression, not progress.
After years of official vacillation as to what to make of the phenomenon and menace of okada on Nigerian roads; after perfunctory attempts at confronting the issue of okada by either banning or restricting their hours of operation, for many reasons, including their use in robbery operations in major cities like Lagos and Abuja among others, government has finally capitulated and is now putting a bold face on things by making a virtue of necessity and insisting on the use of safety helmets for motorcycle users.
This way it can cover its failure to provide adequate and comfortable means of transport for Nigerians. But how many of Nigerian stranded millions can okada transport at a time? It was not long ago that a high-ranking official in government recommended bicycle as an effective means of transportation for Nigerians.
The said official, then a minister, proved he could walk his talk and took to the road on his bike until his crusade came to an abrupt and almost tragic end when he was run down by a devil-may-care motorist.
Addendum: Ojo Madueke, whose overnight crusade was going to turn Nigerians into bicycle-loving Chinese, as Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister, today goes around the world in flier jets generating as much carbon footprints as he could manage. End of the bicycle revolution.
The old-new helmet regulation may ultimately turn out to be counter-productive for it would only encourage more Nigerians, especially politicians, to see the okada business as a shortcut way of addressing the larger issues of joblessness and mass transportation.
We would soon be treated to more homilies on the dignity of labour and more university graduates with 10 years experience or more walking the roads in search of non-existent jobs would be encouraged to buy okadas and become self-employed.
Others less-educated but no less desirous of working would find their way to the roads too or lawmakers in the states' assemblies and the National Assembly would obtain special contracts to buy and send okadas to their jobless constituents.
Some states have already thrown themselves into the business of importing helmets and hopefully motorcycles to be sold, it is claimed, at reduced rates to those who need them.
This way the roads would get more crowded and accident-prone since there are no dedicated lanes for motorcyclists (unlike the case in China and elsewhere) who have to shunt between cars and trailers alike on dangerous highways and narrow dirt roads.
In the end the major beneficiaries of the FRSC regulation would be the same people whose foolish policies make mass transportation impossible and whose greed account for the high rate of unemployment in the country: the politicians. For generous kickbacks and "ten per cents" they would bring fast and immediate business of helmet and motorcycle importation to their friends in the private sector.
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