Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State has warned against riding on Okada (commercial motorcycle) because of the danger such trip poses.Consequently, he has vowed never to visit any of his family members lands in the hospital after getting involved in Okada accident.

The governor said he had told his wife some years ago that he would not pay a visit to such a family member, who on his free volition mounted on an okada, knowing full well how dangerous such a ride was.

“I have always told my wife that any of my family members who climbs Okada and gets injured, I would not come to the hospital,” said Fashola at the annual Conference of Women in Management and Business (WIMBIZ) held at the Eko Hotel, Lagos, yesterday.

According to Fashola, while he would not ban Okada riders from operating in the state, the choice is left for the passenger to make, even though Okada riders are known to be reckless.

“There are difficult choices we would always have to make. What we have done is to study the evolution of Okada and one thing is very clear, there is a vacuum for efficient and fast transportation. The Okada men and women are not just on a free ride and causing nuisance to anybody, they are responding to a demand for a service you have asked for.

“If something is injurious to you, why should government then ban it, don’t you owe a duty to yourself and stay away from it? I think that is the first responsibility you and I bear as government to say this thing is going to hurt me and am going to stay away from it, it should not require Governor Fashola or Commissioner for Transportation to tell me not to go on Okada, because once you get on it, you may never come back alive and that is the risk we take everyday,” Fashola stated.

The governor added, “We asked for it inadvertently by not building the mass transit system, by allowing the old bus system to collapse at the time we were fighting for the soul of our nation and inadvertently, as all of that was happening, we were not building new roads and we were making more children and some were coming from outside Lagos and then we got to a point where we could not move in an efficient manner again and there was this need for urgent transport in a city state that is growing in leaps and bounds where you would have traffic jams.”

The governor urged the women to tell those close to them that riding on Okada was dangerous and that they should not wait for him to ban it before avoiding it, stressing that he would never take a decision to ban Okada from operating in the state.

Also at the conference, Fashola told the women that as the Senate began consideration of the Petroleum Industry Bill and the Federal Government committed to its plan to deregulate the supply and distribution of petroleum products, very far reaching consequences would occur in the sector that represented over 90 percent of the nation’s economy.

“In order, therefore, to ‘Change the Game and make the difference,’ I urge women here to sufficiently arm themselves with enough information about the proposed reforms in this sector and participate in the process of formulating the rules that will govern the ‘game’ of managing the petroleum industry,” he said.

Fashola also urged women to help in mounting campaign for families to adopt family planning in order to curb over-population, which inadvertently leads to poverty and hunger.

“Can a family with one bedroom rise out of poverty if they make six children to live in that one room on the basis of hope that life will get better? This is one of the games that you must help to change by leading the advocacy for the benefits of family planning as a way of improving quality of life and fighting poverty.

“The old arguments that were the foundation of very large families, such as the need for extra farm hands, poor healthcare that limited the survival chances of children and the preference for a particular gender of child have been demystified as simply not tenable,” he stated.

According to the governor, “if we do not restrain our procreative urge, we cannot lift ourselves out of poverty. I urge you not to ignore this call to lead a most impactful change.”