LAGOS: Even before a controversial ban on motorcycle taxis and tricycles in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, crippling traffic jams were a daily ordeal for its more than 20 million inhabitants.
Now just a week on, getting around the city has become even more difficult. There are endless queues at bus stops and crowds of tired and exasperated pedestrians, assaulted by acrid exhaust fumes and the cacophony of drivers stuck in traffic jams honking their horns.
Recently elected governor of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, banned motorbike-taxis, known as “okadas,” and three-wheeled “kekes” saying they caused road accidents and were out of place in a modern city.
Between 2016 and 2019, there were more than 10,000 traffic accidents, and 600 deaths were recorded just at the General Hospital in Lagos.
To mitigate the effects of the ban, the government announced there would be 65 additional buses — in a rapidly growing megacity of more than 20 million people.
Critics say buses are in any case unsuitable for Lagos’ narrow, damaged roads, where okadas and kekes are crucial for both transport and jobs.
Commuters who would normally leave their cars at home now have little choice but to drive, clogging up the roads even more.
Thousands of workers who were reliant on okadas and kekes, have been forced to trek or take the despised buses, now charging higher fares.
The business community too has attacked the ban, saying it is catastrophic for Lagos.
“It is not a good policy and it is not a sustainable policy,” the president of the Lagos chamber of commerce, Muda Yusuf, told AFP.
The ban makes Lagos less attractive to private investors and makes logistics more difficult in an already overcrowded city, he said.
“This policy needs to be urgently reviewed, at least for tricycles to be re-introduced,” he said.
