From Chuks Collins, Awka
A nationwide protest votes by importers, dealers and traders in motorcycle spare parts across the country in the coming general elections is coming, to express their pent up anger over the ban of widespread use of okada as means of commercial transport in some States in Nigeria.
Chairman of Nnewi Importers Association, Pastor Longinus Chukwuma disclosed this in Nnewi, Anambra State, yesterday, after a brief meeting of the association to discuss its stake in the forth-coming elections in March.
Chukwuma said the association’s decision to seek their pound of flesh in the election was collectively taken in its national delegates meeting at Nnewi yesterday and would be circulated to other parts of the country where dealers in motorcycles and their spare parts could be found.
They frowned at the situation where politicians had continued to use motorcycles as campaign gifts to okada operators and other voters only to ban okada business after being voted into power.
According to him, “Politicians give their gifts with one hand and use another hand to collect it back from you aftet the electioneering campaign. They give out motorcycles to okada people in the name of poverty alleviating and once they are elected as governors, the next thing is to ban okada riding and throw thousands of people out of job. That is wickedness. We remember that one of the governors in the South West even gathered okada motorcycles he siezed and crushed them with grinding machines. He destroyed over 6,000 motorcycles,” Pastor Chukwuma said. He alleged that it was Governor Tunde Fashola of Lagos State who maltreated the okada riders and vowed that all stakeholders in motorcycles business all over the country would cast protest votes against whichever political party such governors would identify with.
“Come to Anambra State today, there are okada motorcycles everywhere but it is the safest State in Nigeria. Everyone feels free and crime is controlled. Banning okada business at all is counter-productive and it is not the best way to control crime. If you ban okada business you throw the importers out of business, thousands of dealers in motorcycles spare parts out of business, roadside motorcycle mechanics, vulcnizers out of job, food vendors, out of job and chains of other people along with the dependants of these people affected,” the importers chairman analysed.
He advised his members and other eligible voters to get their permanent voters cards ready to enable them vote. “Voters can register their PVCs and vote where they are at the moment and not necessarily going back to where they initially registered,” he further advised.
Chukwuma pointed out that the association wrote to those governors who banned okada business in their various States, and told them that we would remind them what they did in 2015, saying that it was pay back period, now.
