Will banning okadas make Lagos residents more secure?

I had just started working at Stears when the Lagos state government banned okadas (again) in 2020. I remember how people flooded the highways and waited for long periods at major bus stops on my trip to work. Commuters fought to enter taxis or private vehicles driven by good samaritans who stopped by to take them closer to their destinations. The ban meant that motorcycles and tricycles could not ply major roads in several areas of the state, so many were stranded. 

That was more than two years ago. Before then, the Lagos state government had banned motorcycles at least once (in 2012). 

About three months ago, the state government announced the same ban. Six (Eti-Osa, Ikeja, Lagos Island, Lagos Mainland, Apapa, and Surulere) out of the state’s 20 local government areas (LGAs) remained out of bounds to commercial passenger motorcycles, except for logistics and delivery bikes.

Enforcing this ban has always been challenging, but the state seems serious this time: 7,500 commercial passenger motorcycles were impounded and crushed between June 1 and August 18, just under 100 a day. 

Now, the state government has extended the ban to the local government areas (LGAs) of Kosofe, Oshodi-Isolo, Somolu and Mushin, bringing the total number of affected LGAs to 10 (out of 20 in the state) from the 1st of September. These ten affected LGAs are part of Lagos’ densely populated regions, accounting for about 53% of the state’s population.

According to the state, a ban will address its residents' insecurity and lack of safety while commuting. There is a subtle difference in the way the state government defines the two. Lack of safety here refers to commuters' vulnerability to accidents and similar harms from okadas. Babajide SanwoOlu, the Lagos state governor, argues that the ban has reduced okada-related accidents recorded this year, highlighting that between January and February (the peak), the state recorded at least 550 okada-related deaths and only about 100 as of August.

This article focuses on the issue of insecurity, which relates to incidents such as robberies and kidnappings. Insecurity is a worrying trend in Nigeria. In the past year, insecurity has worsened across the country, with multiple reports of kidnappings, ritual killings, and robberies.

This sour story is not much different for Lagos residents, and many of these nefarious activities have been blamed on okada riders. In a news report, the state's Commissioner for Transportation, Dr Frederic Oladeinde, explained how motorcycles are the only means of transportation used to easily and successfully perpetrate all sorts of crimes, from robbery and kidnapping to supply of arms. 

Truly, there have been unfortunate incidents where motorcycle riders facilitated the lynching and robbing of innocent passengers. Bloody clashes also happen between okada riders and security operatives because the motorcycle riders are being forced off the streets, endangering lives and causing the insecurity the government officials are trying to curb. 

But we know that okadas are not the only source of insecurity across the state. There have been riots, protests, and other conflicts that add to the state’s insecurity levels. Besides, getting robbed in transit or kidnapped—insecurity challenges that okadas are blamed for—can happen on buses or other modes of transport. Moreover, the ban imposes significant costs on Lagos commuters. Are these costs worth it?

Before we unpack these issues, it's important to highlight why we care about okadas so much in Lagos.
 

Why are okadas important?

A total ban on okadas means that the riders and most people who rely on them to get to schools, health centres or work must find alternatives. This is a massive inconvenience as taking an okada is the primary mode of transportation for many Lagos residents.

According to a 2020 Lagos Bureau of Statistics household survey, 24% of pupils who needed to get to schools used a motorcycle (okada), higher than the 20% that used public buses or 5% that used private cars. Okadas are even more helpful for Lagos residents in getting to hospitals. The survey showed that 33% used okada, compared to 30% of the household members across the state that trekked to a hospital or health centre, or 29% that used public buses. Meanwhile, 28% of people in Lagos households used okada to get to work, slightly lower than the 29% that used public buses. Essentially, these motorcycles are important to get around in Lagos, whether to schools, work or hospitals.

But why does commuting have to be via okada? The truth is, it doesn’t have to. There are tricycles, known as Keke napep and other little buses, recently rolled out by the state government. But the state of road infrastructure necessitates the mode of transport. Okadas are known to provide last-mile transportation in a way few public transport alternatives (e.g. public buses) do not. Victoria Okundaye, a Surulere resident who spoke with Stears, explained that since the ban has been enforced, finding vehicles to or from her street has been problematic, especially when heading to work or coming back with several groceries bags. 

Beyond this, most inner streets in Lagos and across the country are unpaved and in bad states. So even tricycles and these buses will struggle to get in and out. Out of the country’s 200,000 kilometres road network, rural or inner roads make up about 150,000 kilometres, with 87% of them considered to be in poor conditions. According to the household survey referenced earlier, 33% (1 of 3) households in the state indicate that their roads are inaccessible by cars, presumably, indicating that the roads are bad.

The importance of okada to the average Lagos resident is quite clear. But remember, okada is also quite dangerous, influencing the ongoing and soon-to-be-extended ban. 

 

Will Lagos residents be more secure with okada bans? 

Apart from okada-related security incidents, there are several causes for a rising threat to life across the country. Some include the 12-year Boko Haram insurgency that continues to impact the northern regions.

More recently, the Biafra separatist rebellion has been a cause of unrest in the south-east. Last year, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project, recorded a 22% increase in the number of organised political violence events in Nigeria. The violence resulted in over 9,900 reported fatalities, nearly a 30% increase compared to 2020. Other sources of insecurity, such as crises and conflicts, often play out in protests, armed clashes or mob attacks.

In Lagos, specifically, ACLED recorded nearly 250 cases of riots and protests between January 2015 and August 2022, with about 34 fatalities. These cases and fatalities do not include the October 2020 protests where hundreds were killed.

Basically, the sources of insecurity are diverse. Attributing or expecting a reduced impact based on one source, which may not be responsible for the majority of insecurity incidences in the state, won’t provide expected results.

But the fact that there are many sources of insecurity does not mean that we should not try to address a single source if we believe that source makes a difference. For instance, weekly security data provided by the council for foreign relations shows that the okada ban led to a reduction (but not total eradication) in okada-related security incidents. This makes sense; if you take okadas off Lagos streets, they will be used less frequently for criminal activities. Since the beginning of this year, there have been at least four reported okada-related incidents, but three of these were in areas with no okada ban.

Although the data is sparse, it is strongly suggestive that the ban is directly affecting okada-related security incidents in LGAs with the ban in place. Better data would permit us to do a more thorough comparison. For example, simply comparing incidents in LGAs with the ban to LGAs with no ban would not allow us to draw concrete conclusions because many other factors could explain the difference. A better approach would be to use the difference-in-difference methods employed by economists. Here, we would first compare incidents in the LGAs with the ban to LGAs without the ban, and we would look at incidents before the ban was put in place. This way, we get a baseline difference between the two sets of LGAs. Let's call this Difference A. We would then do the same comparison after the ban. Let's call this Difference B. Finally, we would look at the difference between the two differences (Difference B - Difference A)—the idea being that any difference between the two comparisons can be more confidently attributed to the okada ban. 

Moving away from the direct effects of the ban on insecurity, it is important to highlight that the other security risks that the ban might pose or heighten when commuters are forced to rely on other transport modes such as buses may be small. According to the Lagos survey, only 4% of the respondents said the ban meant they were more prone to one chance (bus robbery).

So, on the one hand, although the ban does not eradicate okada-related insecurity incidences, it does seem to reduce them. And on the other hand, the ban doesn’t expose too many (about 4%) Lagos residents to insecurity from other transport modes.

So far, so good for the state government.

However, there is also a direct effect of the ban on okada riders, most of whom will end up unemployed. The argument is that banning okadas would lead to more crime because the okada riders not using their bikes for criminal activities before may now turn to crime. 

This reasoning is valid because as honest riders lose their jobs and have no other means of survival, it becomes even more challenging to resist crime as an alternative. When insecurity began to rise last year, we explained how poverty, inequality, emotional upset, etc., can motivate people to resort to extreme violence. Again, the survey showed that following the ban, 6% of respondents claimed that there were more area boys (miscreants) in the state. While this figure is also low, one thing worth considering is how the effect of bans won’t be immediate and might increase over time.

The table shown earlier includes several examples of how unemployment can fuel other levels of unrest, with the over 200 boys that attempted to lynch a policeman. Another incident of area boys clashing led to the killing of one person and a hotel being burnt. 

So the ban doesn't take into account the ripple effect. Moreover, these indirect effects can be extremely difficult to track or measure. Many of the now-unemployed okada riders may simply go underground, perhaps involving themselves in drug-related activities which are hard to track. Or perhaps they direct their aggression to those they live with, causing an increase in domestic and sexual violence, most of which goes unreported. We could speculate ad infinitum here, but the point is simple: whereas the direct effects of the ban on insecurity are easier to measure (yet even that data is limited), the indirect effects are much more slippery. Worse, given the previous ubiquity of okadas in the Lagos transport ecosystem, these indirect effects could be much larger.

Ideally, the state government would commission an in-depth study here. Without that, any claims as to the effect of the ban must be taken with a pinch of salt. 

Here's the final issue: even as we are unsure of the security benefits of the ban, we know that it imposes significant costs on Lagos residents. Any true evaluation must account for both costs and benefits. 

The cost of the ban

With the ban, commuters are forced to walk, often in conditions that don’t guarantee adequate security. Poor infrastructure (badly lit or flooded regions) exposes people to other forms of insecurity risks that okadas could have arguably protected them from.

Earlier, we talked about the poor state of inner roads. With the ban, people will resort to walking the distances from their homes or offices to major bus stops and need infrastructure such as streetlights and well-paved paths. But in addition to most roads being in poor condition, a large proportion (88%) of roads across the state are also without streetlights.

In the government’s defence, some areas are now seeing efforts to refurbish poorly maintained and dilapidated lights. These are some of the moving parts the state has to get working even before enforcing an okada ban which doesn’t significantly improve security and still imposes costs that many commuters have to bear.

Besides, if the government invested in better road and security infrastructure, people would not have to rely on okadas, which are arguably riskier—no one wants to die or disappear. Insecure modes of transportation will naturally phase out and lose their appeal as soon as people have viable options. 

But as we’ve seen, most of these roads that okadas navigate through are not motorable in the first place. In addition to inadequate road infrastructure, commuters are not secure with dimly lit streets which could encourage evil doers to harm people heading to or coming back from work at the wee or late hours. 

Banning okadas can reduce the level of insecurity in the state. In some cases, the ban is necessary. But the sources of insecurity are diverse, which shows the policy is insufficient in solving the insecurity problem. And considering the ban's inconvenience to many residents, the state must go the extra mile in creating other security measures much quicker to ensure residents are better protected and secured.