By Sallieu T. Kamara
They mean different things to different people. To many, they are lawless, reckless, thieves, drug addicts, rebels and unbearably arrogant and rude. I am pretty sure the English dictionaries will soon have nothing more to offer to those searching for new adjectives to describe them and their behaviour. Many of those that hire their services are left with nothing, but deep regret and frustration. The stories they tell afterwards are scary and they give a big cause for concern. But to many others, they have become an indispensable mode of transportation in big cities and towns, as well as in rural communities. They are very serviceable, quick and fast, and they can easily manoeuvre through the heaviest of traffic congestions to take people to their destinations no matter how bad the roads may be. Okada-riding started in Sierra Leone immediately after the ten-year civil war that ravaged every facet of the country, and hard on the heels of the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programme. It started in Kenema and later spread to other parts of the country before it finally arrived in Freetown some five years ago. Majority of the maiden riders were ex-combatants who had fought either on the side of the government forces, rebels or local hunters during the war. I learned that they used monies received as part of the DDR programme to buy motorbike taxis now called Okadas. Today, the trade has flourished and it is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of youth across the country.
despised and spurned
Using motorbikes for commercial transportation was imported from Nigeria where the trade started in the 1980s when the country was facing one of its worst economic difficulties. It was nicknamed Okada after a popular airline in Nigeria called Okada Air. Okadas, as they are popularly known, are associated with serious problems that are weighing heavily on their image, character and operations. This can be seen from the fact that Sierra Leoneans are quick to pass judgment on Okada riders each time they are involved in an accident or in other misdemeanors. They always lose their case in the court of public opinion. People despise and spurn them. This is not unique to Sierra Leone. It is happening everywhere, in Liberia, in Nigeria, you name it. But are Okada riders that terribly awful to the extent that there is absolutely nothing good about them? I really don’t want to believe so. If anything, they themselves are just unfortunate victims of a very putrid system that is weak, corrupt and highly irresponsible. May I hasten to say that I am not playing the devil’s advocate. Not at all! Because I have my own unpleasant encounters with them as well.
personal experiences
My first encounter with Okada riders in Freetown came about when I was rushing to a very important meeting around Kingharman Road one evening. I was already late so I decided to board an Okada. We agreed on paying him Le 2,000 (two thousand leones). On arrival at my destination, I gave him Le 5,000. Whilst I was waiting for my change, he was fumbling with a small bag hanging around his neck pretending to be looking for it. All of a sudden, he bolted away and he almost hit two people in the process. The other one was at the junction of Victoria Street and Priscilla Street in the west of Freetown, very close to the police station. The victim this time around was a young lady. After the lady had alighted from wherever she was coming from, she opened her bag to take out the money and pay the Okada rider. Whilst she was shuffling through her bag, the Okada rider smartly and expertly snatched the lady’s telephone away from her and took off in breakneck speed leaving all of us gazing at him speechless. This was in broad day light.
serious errors
These are the people I am talking about. But what we are experiencing today, I believe, is the culmination of serious errors – intentionally and unintentionally - committed by a wide range of duty bearers across the country over the years. And, perhaps, for us to better understand the problem we need to reflect on how and why this Okada stuff came about, as well as why their operations are now causing serious headache for residents in cities and big towns in the country. Towards the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone, the government, with funds from its development partners, established the Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR). Its primary task was to oversee the process that aimed at collecting weapons from fighters of all factions, removing fighters of all sorts from their fighting units, improving community and national security, returning and assisting ex-combatants to once again become productive members of their communities.
ex-combatants
According to a review done in 2007 by Desmond Molloy of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, the DDR programme disarmed 76,000 fighters, including 6,000 children, whom they registered as ex-combatants. All of them were provided with Transitional Safety Allowance or Reinsertion Benefits to facilitate their return to their families and communities. Except for the local hunters, most of them remained in big towns and cities where the transitional camps were located rather than going back to their homes. The failure of the ex-combatants to return to their homes was due partly to the fear of reprisals, but largely to the failure of the reintegration aspect of the DDR programme. The NCDRR had a responsibility to advice ex-combatants to choose careers that could earn them a decent living when they would have gone back to their communities. In the first place, most of the ex-combatants were not interested in the trainings that the NCDRR packaged for them and the Commission should have known that. What they were really interested in was the reinsertion benefits and start-up tool kits that were provided to them. Because of this, ex-combatants went for areas such as IT, which would fetch them more money in terms of what they would accrue from the sale of their start-up kits.
training centres
It was common to see some of the designated training centres for ex-combatants virtually empty on weekdays because they did not turn up and they would only show up on days that allowances were paid to them and to collect their start-up kits. And the proprietors of these training centres were also not honest enough to inform NCDRR about it, maybe, fearing that that would reduce the number of people that the Commission would pay for. But even if nobody told the Commission, didn’t they see it themselves during their monitoring trips? Nobody will convince me that they did not know. In short, the ex-combatants were poorly prepared and ill-equipped to go back to their communities. The incentive for them to stay in Freetown and other provincial and district towns was irresistible. They stayed and took up Okada riding. When they started, the police and other authorities with the responsibility to regulate and protect road users considered Okada riders to be above the law and treated them as such. The used unregistered and unlicensed motorbikes and the riders themselves moved all over the place without a rider’s license to certify their competency, and they never adhered to traffic rules. They were doing all of these under the noses of police officers who then saw every Okada rider as an ex-combatant and could behave violently if their excesses were checked. More so, some of these Okadas were owned by the very police officers. So rather than making them conform to prescribed traffic rules, some of them elicited bribes and other favours from them.
checkpoints
Even as I write this piece, there are thousands of unregistered Okadas plying different routes across the country, by riders without crash helmets or valid licenses, endangering the lives of passengers and other road users. They always do shared rides involving three or more people on very bad roads, sometimes resulting in fatal accidents. They go through police checkpoints on a daily basis but the police don’t care a hoot. All what they are interested in is the little hand-outs they receive from them. By so doing, they contribute immensely to creating the problem we face today. We cannot establish the rules of engagement in the middle of the game. We should have done what we are grappling with today right from the outset, so that we would have established a culture of good citizenry among the Okada riders. This is why I believe we should not fault and demonize them alone for what they are or doing today because we gave them the impression all these years that what they were doing was right. Teaching old dogs new tricks requires a lot of nerve and resilience.
illegal trade
There is another disturbing element associated with the Okada trade in Sierra Leone. A good number of the motorbikes the riders are using, especially in the provinces, are smuggled into the country from neighbouring Guinea. There are small groups of businesspeople in Guinea and Sierra Leone who specialize in facilitating this illegal trade across the borders. Again, I am not sure that our customs officers and the police are not part of this syndicate, which is not only depriving the country of much-needed resources in terms of customs dues and other charges, but also strengthening the criminal bonds that exist between the Okadas and these state officers. This is why it did not come as much of a surprise to me when some people told me that many Okadas operating in the country today are owned by senior police officers. Some junior officers have faced a lot of embarrassment at the hands of their bosses after they had arrested riders for committing serious traffic offences and on the verge of following due process of the law only to be ordered by their bosses who happen to own the defaulting Okadas, to let go of them.
beating the system
In fact, I understand that there are now moves by the Okada riders aided by some police officers, mainly owners of Okadas, to beat the new system, which prohibits Okadas from plying some major streets in Freetown. What they are doing now is to change the registration of the motor-bikes from commercial to private since a motorbike with a private number plate is not affected by the new guidelines. They will then have a private number plate, but will continue operating on a commercial basis. What a clever way of beating the system! There is also the aspect of the Okada Riders’ Association. Established as a trade union meant to regulate the operations of Okadas, it articulates the concerns and needs of its members, as well as protects and promotes their interest and public image. But as far as I know, the leadership has not done much in these areas. Like the police, their primary interest is in collecting dues from Okada riders and what happens to them afterwards does not interest them much. In the first place, they seem to have failed woefully in mobilizing and organizing Okada riders as the first step towards changing public perception about them. The leadership of the Okada riders should be able to organize their members in a way that they know who runs where, and invariably, they will be in a better position to apprehend and punish criminals within their ranks. But as it is, everything is chaotic. Okadas choose their routes and after committing a crime for which they are being sought-after, they move to other locations to bid time.
green advocates
In Liberia, when the government attempted to stop the Okadas from plying the major streets in Monrovia about two years ago, a civil society organization called Green Advocates headed by a young articulate lawyer, Alfred Brownell, took the matter to the courts. The argument then was simple: the licenses issued to them did not specify where they should run and where they shouldn’t and also in a country where the unemployment rate was alarmingly high it could be suicidal to eliminate hundreds of thousands of youth who have found employment in the Okada trade. They won. The courts ruled in their favour even though it took time. I was looking forward to the Okada Riders Association to test the legality or otherwise of stopping them from using major streets in the city. The case of the Liberian Okada rider is not different from ours. The unemployment rate is high in Sierra Leone with the cost of living becoming almost unbearable for many. The Okadas are contributing immensely to making the informal economic sector buoyant. Those who are involved in it are mainly youth, the group of our citizenry that is highly volatile and unpredictable. Let us also look at it this way: the police have arguably turned out to be the biggest beneficiaries of the Okada trade in Sierra Leone. How genuine will they be in implementing policies that they know will directly militate against their economic interests?
disservice
I am saying this because I want us to look at the other side of the Okada problem in Sierra Leone. Yes, the Okada riders are rude, lawless; they are everything bad one can think of. But what role do some state actors play in all of this? The blame should be shared: the NCDRR, the association of Okada riders, the police, the wardens, the Sierra Leone Roads Authority and customs should all accept shared responsibility. Until they accept responsibility for their disservice to the people of Sierra Leone, we will not be convinced that business will not continue as usual. We should not continue to make Okada riders scapegoats for their unfortunate situation. It is morally wrong to point fingers at others, whilst we truly know that we are equally responsible for the same wrong doings. There are laws covering every sphere of the state. We have adequate traffic laws, for instance, that could make the Okada situation in the country look different. But these laws are selectively implemented because of very obvious reasons. The blame for this should go to the police and the wardens for their failure to apply the law to the letter. Stopping Okadas from using major streets in Freetown, I believe, is not the answer to the problem. If anything, it helps to exacerbate the already compounded problem of the ordinary men and women who depend on an Okada for their daily movements.
broader and deeper
And what has become very clear lately is that both the taxi drivers and the Okada riders no longer accept passengers for what used to be the usual one-way journey. The Okadas do take one-way but the cost is prohibitive for many in some of these distances. Because the options are limited, people have to pay. It is more biting for people that have children that are attending schools far off from their homes. They spend almost their entire salary on transport alone. Do we know the pain and suffering this is causing to the homes of such people? The authorities know about this, but nobody is doing anything to stop or minimize this criminal and heartless practice of our drivers. But do you simply blame it on the Okadas and drivers? The problem is broader and deeper than we image. Let us not hesitate to face it. It is not about the behaviour of Okada riders alone, it is about the attitude and behaviour of all of us.
