Someone’s taking boda boda operators for a ride, and there’s a Chinese connection

By Peter Kimani

Kenya: When the announcement came this week, banning boda boda (motorbike) operators from night travel, Nairobi Police County Commander Benson Kibue appeared to have lost his sense of time.

He said, in that interesting accent, that the operators would ride only between 6am and 8am, before he changed his mind and said 8pm.

But the statement that came from his other boss, Siegeman David Kimaiyo, indicated 6am to 6pm as the permissible time-frame for boda boda men and a handful of women to do their business.

When such basic facts fail to add up, I look elsewhere for answers. Why, the explanation that boda boda operators are abetting crime at night in some parts of the city does not appear to bear any heft.

The police concerns about night crime appear preposterous in light of the more grievous crimes being committed during the day by boda boda operators.

For starters, I suspect this is the only private business where one earns while still learning, for boda boda riders practise riding with a passenger at the back.

Unsurprisingly, the mishaps that some of their passengers face are simply out of this world: some are asked to place their legs on the exhaust (unaware of its capacity to heat), while a simple thrust of the hand is supposed to compel other motorists to stop in their tracks and let the boda boda have its way.

Some manoeuvres have left many with broken bones – and I am talking about boda boda operators and their passengers – for several orthopaedic hospitals have sprouted across the country to mop up the mess.

Boda boda operators are reputed to break not just bones, but homes as well. They may not possess the daredevil antics perfected by matatu drivers, but they have a unique advantage: theirs is a personalised service, and it also helps that they can access even the most remote hamlet on earth.

Putting the two facts together is a dangerous mix, especially when the riders appear to be young men, some with no fixed abode, and so likely to welcome any invitation to a glass of water to clear their dust-clogged throats. Quenching thirst is just the beginning of more important business.

That, too, is no big deal; the  ability of Kenyan to accept and move on is remarkable, so even when the boda boda operators mark their territories with more than just marks on the dust-tracks, few eyebrows are raised.

It is probably true the operators would be virtually invisible at night since most do not bother about reflective clothing, and some bikes appear to navigate through the tiniest of paths without their lights on.

So the desire to curtail their night business has nothing to do with their nefarious daytime activities.

Which leads us to conclude the ban could only have been prompted by one thing: business rivalry among Chinese investors in the country.

Why, all the bikes are imported from China, and the men laying the suspect railway are also from China.

The connection between the two projects is revealing: our neighbours in Ethiopia, whose railway concession preceded ours, and who have dealt with the Chinese probably longer than anybody else in the region, did not allow boda boda madness on the streets of Addis.

They understand order in public transportation cannot be enforced in the zigzag ways of boda boda. It is only in our midst that such social experiments are possible because we don’t seem to have the capability to say no.