Motorcycle imports hit record high

In the busy market of Oshodi, a suburb of Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial capital, it is impossible to miss riders on bikes branded in purple, green and yellow, waiting to pick up passengers and join the city’s notorious traffic.

The bike riders, usually male, arrange themselves in a seemingly disorganised fashion as they beckon on pedestrians, bargain with potential customers whilst contemplating how to respond to orders beeping on their smartphones.

The customers, typically youths, are a large part of Nigeria’s smartphone users recently estimated by Jumia, the online retail platform listed on the New York Stock Exchange this year, to be 36 million. They are in the forefront of a mobile-first digital transformation sweeping across Nigeria and their intolerance for go-slows is leading to a surge in bike import in the country.

Nigeria spent N111.96 billion to import motorcycles in the second quarter of 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, more than the combined amounts expended on bikes in the first six months of 2018, making it a record high, according to BusinessDay computations.

In the last two years, increasing demand for bikes has seen motorcycles become the biggest non-oil import item. It is now Nigeria’s fifth-biggest demand in the international market with the surge in the fourth quarter of 2018 where expenditure on bike importation rose some 109 percent.

Across Lagos and in other regions of the country, bike-hailing businesses are gaining prominence. Max.ng, Gokada and ORide have no less than 2,000 bikes among themselves.

“The ride-hailing technological solution has proven scalable and has encouraged investment,” said Bongo Adi, a senior lecturer at the Lagos Business School. “The difficulty bike owners face in the traditional okada industry in monitoring activities of the riders they lease to has been done away with.”

But the rising demand for bikes also points to the neglect of alternatives modes of transportation like rail which has led to heavy traffic on roads. At the same time, it stems from economic migration from the northern region to hotspots like Lagos, Adi noted.

“People leaving their states to seek greener pastures in Lagos find it easier to join the bike transportation business,” Adi said.

Boniface Chizea, MD and CEO of BIC Consultancy Services, shared similar views on the impact of the poor transportation system on the country’s increasing motorcycle demand.

The new kids on the block
Not so long ago, the yellow and black-striped danfo and molue buses were the undisputed kings of Lagos roads, but the rebranding of a one-time popular okada business is redefining the city’s transportation landscape as ride-hailing is fast becoming the new norm for commuting in Lagos and some other parts of the country.

Aside from traffic, the choice of taking okadas or ‘the new kids on the block’ is about cost, convenience and quality of service, said Anita, a 22-year-old student of the University of Lagos.
“There are areas where okada men have been banned from entering but the ride-hailing ones, who drive more carefully, are permitted,” she said.

Some workers in the middle-income class say they leave their cars at home on days of the week traffic usually gets congested.

“I often take bikes or Uber to save fuel and ease my mobility,” one banker said.

An offer difficult to resist
The motorcycle transport business has not always been as attractive as it now is and Nigerians once only considered it as a last resort.

The birth of the multi-million-dollar industry was in August of 2015 when Max.ng pioneered the biking services, although adoption would follow three years after, as the popularity of hail-riding taxi, Uber, brought aggregation-model-styled transport businesses to the centre stage.

The development paved the way for the likes of Gokada, which started operations in February 2018, and ORide, the biking service that began operations in June 2019.

With the unemployment rate at record-high of 23 percent, many Nigerians are jumping at the opportunity to make ends meet especially in the reformed bike business which adopts technology to deliver alternative service to the traditional okada with dozens of restrictive policies against its operation.

“Even though I am a graduate, I do not regret taking up the job because I can fend for myself and take care of my people,” Unknown Samuel, a biker who has been with a popular ride-hailing bike platform for six months, told BusinessDay.

Samuel was glistening with sweat after a half-hour under the scorching sun. He is a 27-year-old and a graduate of a federal government-owned university in Nigeria. He has a command of English better than the average Nigerian.

“I was unable to get a job after completing my mandatory youth service in 2017 until a bike-hailing service reached me with an offer I could not resist,” he said before putting on his helmet and disappearing into the anonymous traffic.

Other riders approached by BusinessDay said bike ride-hailing platforms offer them health insurance scheme, monthly remuneration, remote and flexible working hours, necessary training and similar other benefits.

Although this appears all good for Samuel and his colleagues, traditional okada riders expressed mixed feelings about the ride-hailing companies; some show indifference while others say it is killing their business.

Despite the huge demand for bikes, Nigeria does not have a local production plant, but instead relies on Completely Knocked Down parts from Asian countries, which are assembled in the country.

SEGUN ADAMS & GBEMI FAMINU