with Sule Musa (WhatsApp: +23276613799)

Including several concerns raised by sections of the local media, a recent BBC report by a lady visiting Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, added to the litany of similar groanings by residents over the nightmare motorcycle and tricycle (locally known as kekeh) riders inflict upon other motorists as well as pedestrians in the city.

The reporter who was visiting from the UK narrated that she had neither seen nor imagined a vehicular traffic infested by both bikes and tricycles as she witnessed in Freetown. Perhaps, it doesn’t exist anywhere else. And certainly, not with the reckless abandon the Freetown riders are notorious.

There’s not a single driver, save the powerful who ride behind sirens, who hasn’t bemoaned this hazard. But it’s the hopelessness of the situation that seeks to make it depressive.  

The law enforcers, this time, the traffic police and Sierra Leone Roads Safety Authority (SLRSA) wardens, appear unaware, undecided or even unperturbed as to the dangers waylaying the city roads and streets.    

Whereas both cycles have stepped in to assuage, mostly urban transportation challenges in many West African cities, there’s nowhere they are left so unregulated as in the case of Freetown. There’s no road or street, no matter the prominence, where they are restricted. And they ply with such brutal arrogance; negligent of the horrors they inflict on other road users, and even sometimes, among themselves.

With the prevalent drug pandemic, many have begun to associate the commercial motorcycle and tricycle riders as primary users – adding to the fear of other sane road users.

It may no longer even be accurate to refer to them as riders as swimming better describe their road use.

Leaving other road users gripped with hair-raising suspense and angst, they meander through the slightest space; scratching cars in the process, mine more than twice, overtaking without a care in the world and abruptly stopping to pick or drop a passenger. Neither do they understand what trafficators on their machines are meant for nor do they recognize those of the vehicles ahead of them.  

When the commercial motorbikes or Okadas, as they are called, began few decades ago, they quickly earned special hospital wards reserved and named after them. The Okada Wards, just as quickly, began to complain of inadequacy of hospital beds because of the frequency of motorbike accidents.

Many who were not lucky to make the wards made it to the mortuaries. Several others sustain permanent scars, broken limbs ending in limps.  

How do they train to ride and how are they certified to ride?

My late friend, Lansana Fofana, used to point derisively at an open field besides the Saint Edwards Secondary School in his Kingtom neighborhood and say “here’s where they learn to ride for about an hour or two and then jump on motorbikes to endanger other road users.”

I have personally taken the bikes in the past, and more than once, offered to ride instead; with willing and grateful riders as the passenger.

In all sympathy, most of the bike (and kekeh) riders, hitherto jobless, are creating employment and sustenance for themselves and their dependents in a situation where jobs are abysmally lacking.  However, the necessity for jobs cannot override lives and limbs.

Besides the roads they ply, their parking spots are as much remarkable. They are, in the West-end of Freetown, heaviest at the Lumley Market – Regent Road Junction, Wilberforce Bottom Mango, Model Junction, Murray Town Junction among several others where they make driving and road crossing everyday horror.

Inevitably, the Okada menace has begun to impact on property values. In recent years, I have heard some individuals vow that they won’t reside anywhere around Regent Road, Sheriff Drive, Kaningo, Mallama and several other dwelling places along that axis. This misgiving can only expand.

WHAT TO DO?

In the cities, they have to be taken off the major roads and streets. Including, of course, supervised training and certification (licensing) for the riders.

More for political reasons, perhaps as they are significant features of political campaigns, law enforcers are usually undecided what to do with them; except occasionally extorting or seizing them.  

Okada, as the commercial bikes have come to be known in most of West African cities, towns and villages, have their use and are extremely helpful, especially, in remote locations where vehicles are absent. Having said that, the operators need government regulation and it’s urgent.