"The question as to who controls the means of production is fundamental to understanding underdevelopment. In every society, those who control the means of production control the political and social order as well." Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Few symbols capture the chaos and contradictions of Nigeria's economy more vividly than the ubiquitous "Keke NAPEP" tricycle, that vexatious contrivance on three-wheels from India, that buzzes through the arteries of Nigerian cities, towns, and villages alike with consistent determination to annoy and discomfiture. To some, it represents entrepreneurship, job creation, and the democratisation of mobility. To others, it is a distress signal, a visible symptom of de-industrialization, technological dependence, and the informalisation of labour.
The "Keke economy," as it may now be called, stands as both a survival strategy and a policy indictment where lip service paid to industrialisation has become exposed for what it is - bogus posturing.
The rise of the Keke economy began as a palliative measure under the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) of the early 2000s, when government sought to provide self-employment opportunities for thousands of idle youths.
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Over time, the tricycle became an alternative to the defunct Peugeot, Styre, Fiat and Mercedes assembly plants and the vanished textile and oil mills, and remained a stand-in for the industrial capacity Nigeria failed to sustain. The Keke's proliferation tells a deeper story about Nigeria's dual economy. On the one hand lies a formal economy of oil revenues, banks, telecommunications, minerals and imports; on the other, an informal, cash-based system where millions eke out a precarious living in transport, trade, and services.
The tricycle is the quintessential artifact of the latter. It shows how the absence of large-scale industrial employment has forced the population into micro-enterprises that are both ingenious and precarious as well as emotionally draining. Nigeria once harboured ambitions of becoming Africa's manufacturing giant. The 1970s witnessed the establishment of major industrial complexes like the Ajaokuta Steel, Kaduna Refinery, Peugeot Assembly in Kaduna, Volkswagen and Leyland in Lagos and Ibadan, Fiat in Kano, Styre in Bauchi, Mercedes in Enugu, and the textile mills of Kano and Kaduna. These were the pillars of modernity and self-reliance envisioned by national planners.
Yet by the 1990s, these industries had either collapsed or been privatised into dormancy. Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs), liberalisation, and import dependence eroded the productive base. In their place emerged the informal service economy downgraded from automobiles to motorcycles, tricycles, recharge card vendors, POS agents, and petty traders. The "Okada" and "Keke" became the default fallback for millions of Nigerians displaced from rural agriculture and denied entry into formal manufacturing. Today, the Keke economy absorbs unemployed graduates, artisans, displaced farmers, and former factory workers alike. It employs millions directly and indirectly from drivers and mechanics to spare-parts dealers and jerry can petrol vendors. In short, the Keke economy has now become the domain of the lumpen proletariat and the unemployed. But it does so without structure, welfare, or technological innovation.
The tricycles themselves are imported, mostly from India and China reinforcing Nigeria's dependence on foreign manufacturing, assembled without grace or finesse by unskilled tinkerers, along our urban streets in the open. The Keke phenomenon is both economic and political. It reveals how governance systems adapt to poverty through palliatives rather than transformation. Successive administrations have distributed tricycles as empowerment schemes, often tied to electoral patronage rather than economic planning. What might have been a transitional measure became institutionalised as a permanent survival economy. If the degeneration continues, we may witness the downgrading of our economy from Keke to wheelbarrow assembly as the industrial feature of our era.
For local governments and urban unions, the Keke sector is also a revenue source. Daily levies, tickets, and "loading fees" have created a shadow taxation system where thousands pay without social protection or attribution. This informal fiscal regime benefits political intermediaries but does little to modernise transport or create durable employment. It merely subsidises indolent labour and cheap tricks that pass for "development". The tricycle's mechanical simplicity masks a deeper dependency.
Every component of its inelegant frame ranging from its spark plugs to its axles, is imported. There is virtually no Nigerian value-addition except in its crude assembly and repair. In effect, the Keke symbolises our technological impotence: we can drive them, maintain them, and even paint them in bright colours, but we cannot manufacture them. They are manufactured in India, shipped to Nigeria and assembled on the roadside in our sprawling urban spaces.
This pattern repeats itself across Nigeria's economy. From mobile phones to generators and automobiles, we import the products of other nations' industrial revolutions while exporting raw materials without value addition. The consequence is a trade imbalance, currency instability, and mass unemployment. The Keke economy thrives on this imbalance, turning imported goods into vehicles of survival and annoyance rather than development. If Nigeria's ambition for industrialisation is to be revived, as envisioned in the Lagos Plan of Action of 1980 and previous national development plans, it must move beyond assembly to invention and design.
True industrialisation requires a chain of innovation, from metallurgy and machine tools to electronics, software, and transport engineering. The tricycle or of that proves too complex, the wheelbarrow, can become a starting point for this transformation if properly integrated into an industrial policy framework. We should imagine a Nigerian Mobility Initiative (NMI) that converts the Keke into a locally designed electric tricycle, powered by solar batteries and produced in clusters across the country. Such an initiative would generate employment in design, production, logistics, and maintenance, while reducing fuel dependency and carbon emissions.
It would also link technical colleges, research institutes, and private investors and innovators into a functional value chain. China's industrial success began with such small steps, copying, adapting, and eventually innovating. What Nigeria imports today from India was itself once imported by India from Japan. Industrialisation is cumulative; it requires a vision and consistency that transcends political cycles. It also requires a consistent drive provided by the state.
The expansion of the Keke economy is also tied to Nigeria's chaotic urbanisation. As rural areas decline under insecurity, desertification, and poverty, millions migrate to cities in search of livelihood. The tricycle becomes their entry into the urban economy, a substitute for unavailable factory or construction jobs. But the over-reliance on such informal occupations clogs cities, worsens congestion and pollution, and exposes drivers to exploitation and insecurity. Urban planning in Nigeria including Abuja has not kept pace with this demographic explosion.
Few cities possess integrated transport systems. The absence of efficient buses and trains makes the Keke indispensable yet inadequate. Industrialisation must, therefore, include not only factories but also the infrastructure of modern urban life in the form of roads, power, housing, and public transport. For now, the tricycle has become a permanent and unavoidable fixture in our cities and towns. Also, it has become a cultural icon and a symbol of resilience and adaptability albeit in an unenviable and unsustainable manner. It connects the urban elite with the underclass, the student with the market woman, and the migrant with the metropolis. It has inspired art, music, and politics. But this normalisation of poverty and improvisation is also dangerous: it lowers expectations and legitimises underdevelopment.
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When a society begins to glorify survival over progress, it risks losing its sense of collective ambition. The Keke economy, while ingenious, should not become the norm or the ceiling of our aspirations. Instead, it should be the floor from which a new productive economy rises. To transform the Keke economy into an engine of industrialisation, Nigeria needs a multi-pronged strategy consisting of the following:
(1) Local Manufacturing and Assembly Hubs.
(2) Technology Transfer Agreements.
(3) Vocational and Technical Education.
(4) Financial Inclusion for SMEs.
(5) Green Transport Policy.
(6) Integrated Urban Mobility.
(7) Industrial Policy Consistency.
Ultimately, the Keke economy challenges us to confront the meaning of development itself and to ask the question: Is progress measured by the number of people employed in survival activities, or by the capacity of a nation to produce what it consumes? Nigeria's policy discourse must move from poverty alleviation to wealth creation; from import substitution to innovation; from palliative empowerment to productive employment.
Industrialisation is not a luxury but the foundation of sovereignty. A nation that cannot manufacture its own tricycles, tractors, or transformers remains economically dependent and politically vulnerable. The hum and clutter of the Keke on Nigeria's streets should remind policymakers of both our ingenuity and our missed opportunities. Each tricycle represents the potential energy of a society yearning for productive engagement. Turning that potential into progress requires vision, courage, and investment in science, technology, and human capital. The Keke economy may be a sign of resilience today, but it must not become the epitaph of Nigeria's industrial dream and the graveyard of our national greatness. Please, let us not allow our country to descend even lower to the "Wheelbarrow" economy!
