Banning Okada, Artisanal Miners will Deepen Poverty, Insecurity, Says AAN

Michael Olugbode

ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), has warned the federal government against planned ban of commercial motorcycles, popularly known as Okada, as well as mining activities in a bid to stem the rising insecurity across the country, insisting that the decision would further aggravate poverty in the country,

A statement by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) yesterday lamented that the planned nationwide ban on commercial motorcycles, as well as illegal mining activities by the federal government in a bid to stem the rising insecurity across the country, as hinted by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, last week, would further deepen the multi-dimensional poverty index if measures were not taken to address the population involved.

ActionAid, while agreeing that placing a ban on the use of motorcycles and mining activities might cut the supply of logistics and source of funds for the purchase of arms to the terrorists, said while this is being contemplated in national interest to combat insecurity, there must be well thought-out alternatives to lessen the effects of the attendant loss of livelihoods on the people that will be affected.

“Regardless of the means being considered for the proposed ban on Okada riders, artisanal and small-scale miners, it must be implemented in a way that will not further worsen the country’s dire economic situation. A World Bank report has already noted that the number of poor persons in Nigeria will rise to 95.1 million in 2022.

“The number of poor people was 89.0 million in 2020. This means that over 6.1 million more persons would have fallen into the poverty bracket between 2020 and 2022, a 6.7% increase. With the projected 2022 figures, the number of poor persons in Nigeria has had a four-year increase of 14.7% from the 2018/19 figure of 82.1 million to the projected 95.1 million in 2022,” the NGO stated.

ActionAid, in the statement, lamented that in Nigeria, the poverty rate has been aided by the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the growing population, the high level of inflation, which stood at 18.6% as of June 2022 and the harsh effects of the Ukraine-Russia warfare.

It insisted that, “This development is coming after the Nigerian government said it lifted 10.5 million Nigerians out of poverty between 2019 and 2021. Though the President has repeatedly said that the Bank of Industry has created nine million jobs in the country since 2015, and different schemes to create jobs and tackle poverty in the country have been launched, these have failed to stem the tide of poverty in the country.”

The statement said the claim of the Attorney General that, “If you are talking of banning motorcycles, for example, I think the number of people using these motorcycles is not up to 20 per cent of the Nigerian population,” is not tenable against the backdrop that this represents a significant segment of the population whose condition will be worsened,  because Nigeria continues to battle issues such as food inflation, rising unemployment, the rising cost of living among other economic challenges, and these issues are responsible for why more people are falling into the poverty net.