Scapegoating Achaba

“After we fry the fat, we see what is left”. Yoruba Proverb

Very few phenomena highlight unique class differentiations and perception in Nigeria more clearly than the ubiquitous commercial motorcyclist. If you can read this piece, chances are that you belong to the privileged group which finds the Achaba (or Okada) worker an irritating and dangerous nuisance that should be either extremely regulated, or banned altogether. You may have a car or cars, and therefore been spared the harrowing experience of surrendering your life or limbs to a young man in constant hurry to make a living, armed only with contempt for laws, rules, and those privileged to share the road with him in cars. You will be least likely to speak against the widening clampdowns on this mobile threat, even in cities like Kano and Lagos where life for majority of people will be drastically affected by it. You are the elite, and you would rather have an increase in the cost of living, than live with Achaba riders.

If, on the other hand, you are one of millions of Nigerians who make use of this necessary evil, your relative poverty will be much more compounded in areas where the only means of transport you can afford is either banned or severely restricted. You may already have suffered previous injuries or had close shaves with your rider who is impervious to pleas or fear. You have become used to having your heart in your month, and by now live with the numbing uncertainty that no trip on  commercial motorcycle is guaranteed to end safely. You are a one of the Nigerians who will be bitter at governments that provide no alternative for the Achaba, have failed to regulate it at the point when it was both necessary and possible, and are now reacting in a manner that makes life more difficult for everyone, except the elite. You are the lumpen element, and a victim of a state run by elites. Your life will be more difficult, and you will fight for the Achaba rider.

If you are an Achaba rider in areas where your lifeline is viewed as the prime source of threat to national security, or in parts of the country where state governments clamp down on you more for political reasons than for purposes of improving public safely or public welfare, you would be made even more desperate. Your life on the margins of legality and safety, hanging on an investment of less than N100,000, (quite possibly made by someone else), is about to change for the worse. If you have been banned altogether, you would have lost your only source of living. If you have been curfewed, your income is severely slashed, and you are exposed to the predatory tendencies of the police and other regulatory agencies when you attempt to stretch the curfew a bit. The return you make to the owner will be lower; your own income virtually wiped off, and the informal sector of the economy to which you provide a lifeline would have shrunk with your fortunes.

If you are one of the many governors who take decisions to curtail, regulate or ban Achaba riders, it is very likely that you would not have found the decision easy to take. If you have advisers with the courage to tell you, you would have heard that Achaba is a vital part of the economy which supports large sections of the population, provides essential services to millions as they move around, and that any measure against the service is politically sensitive. You would have heard that night time bans on Achaba will virtually wipe out night economies, and young people who live off the service are likely to be pushed into desperation, crimes or become foot soldiers of the insurgency.

It is also likely that security agencies have advised that limiting the operations of Achaba will reduce attacks on them; or on other targets. They may have provided evidence that Achaba riders are used to ferry intelligence and conduct surveillance, and they are difficult to track before, during or after attacks. The evidence may or may not be conclusive on whether partial banning, curfews or outright bans improve security, but as a decision-maker, you need to be seen to be acting in the interest of security. You may also have heard from one or two advisers that banning or regulating Achaba has never worked; is not the source of insecurity; and that the decision cannot be enforced owing to difficulties of enforcement and weaknesses of state regulatory organs.

In nations where public opinion is a vital tool of democratic governance, matters such as banning, regulating or restricting Achaba riders will be hotly debated. Politicians and policy makers will weigh the consequences of decisions very carefully. Studies into the phenomenon of a transport service which fills critical gaps and endangers millions of lives would have been undertaken to support policies. Major stakeholders, (who are basically the relatively poorer citizens, but by far the largest majority) and the Achaba riders, mechanics, operators of the large informal sectors of the economy, security agencies, health managers, youth groups, civil society organizations and community elders would all have had a say in the matter. Studies would have been conducted to establish how and why the motorcycle has become such as vital element in our society and economy; and indices on demographic changes, urbanization and changes in the structures of the national economy would all have been assessed. Hearings may have been held by legislators, where experts and advocates would have testified on what the Achaba represents.

But we are not one of such countries. Achaba riders and related stakeholders are only useful around election times. We are the type of countries which are perennially on the defensive, and our decision-making is almost always aimed at dealing retroactively with problems that have become intractable. So Lagos State government comes down heavily on Achaba ostensibly as part of its social and environmental sanitizing campaign, but in reality as a measure to create the false image of a state which has moved beyond the need for the motorcycle taxi. Governor Fashola will not be happy to hear the complaint that his decision will be that much more difficult to implement if the majority of the Achaba (Okada) riders in Lagos come from his state; or that the service will resurface sooner than later, because it is need-driven.

Now Kano State government orders suspension of the service in Kano city and environs until they go through a registration exercise, a few days after the Emir of Kano survived a day-light assassination attempt. It admits it acted on recommendations by security agents. Perhaps the security agents told the Kano State government something new or specifically related to the attempted assassination of the Emir that made Achaba riders suspect, but it would have been useful to learn lessons from attempts to ban or restrict motorcycles in Borno, Yobe, Plateau and one or two places, and the impact of those decisions on levels of insecurity and poverty.

In plain terms, the tendency to clamp down on Achaba riders is related to the practice of using motorcycles to assassinate people, attack security agents or escape. Motorcycles are easy to maneuver, difficult to identify and control and they raise little suspicion. The problem is that there are, in any one city, hundreds of thousands of motorcycles, and only a few of them are used by insurgents or assassins. The rest are used by honest young men to earn lawful living. Even in areas where night time bans on motorcycles have been placed, attacks have not ceased. Nor is it evident that even total bans on motorcycles will obliterate the threats of the insurgency.

Achaba riders are being scapegoated by governments which are desperate to find solutions. They represent the most vulnerable members of society, the group that insists on a slice of the cake even if they have no political clout and live on the margins of poverty and legality. Majority of them should be in schools, technical colleges, working in trades or engaged in agricultural production, but these are not available. If the economy expands fast enough to provide taxis and buses for the public, Achaba will not exist. If the Nigerian state had accorded due recognition to providing quality education, skills acquisition and expansion of opportunities in agriculture, the army of unemployed who ride Achaba with such reckless gusto and fill massive gaps in the economy will hardly exist.

Kano State’s decision to register Achaba may be a ploy to limit their operations in Kano. No one needs to tell Governor Kwankwaso that he may have to revisit the decision in the very near future. Kano state economy is already severely affected by the insurgency. The host of further restrictions and other social problems which the restrictions will impose will make life more difficult. Even the security situation in Kano could get worse. The alarming failure of security which was exposed in the attempted assassination of the Emir of Kano will take more than tinkering with the operations of Achaba to fix. Kano state is chasing shadows. There is a real problem in dealing with insecurity in a large, densely-populated city like Kano, but scapegoating the poor is not the solution. Nonetheless, Achaba riders in Kano should cooperate with Kano State Government, so that those involved in legitimate search for livehlihood can resume. They are, after all, as much victims of the insecurity as any Kano citizen.