Bodaboda: Elephant in this general election

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WHAT’S!

Last Saturday, we took part in the third Joe Walker Remembrance 60km Relay Walk, in memory of the Ugandans who have perished on our roads. It is an astonishingly large number of victims, and it continues to grow day by day.

Uganda’s roads are some of the most dangerous in the world, with the country’s road accident average higher than the regional and global average. It is also estimated that more than 60% of the fatal accidents in Uganda involve bodabodas. A few years ago, a UN report revealed that more than 10 people die every day as a result of bodaboda accidents.

At the Mulago National Referral Hospital casualty ward, 80% of the patients admitted are due to bodaboda accidents. It is so bad that I understand a ward dedicated to victims of bodaboda accidents is being, or has been created.

Yet, nobody is talking about it. With elections approaching, and with thousands of candidates promising heaven and earth to voters, no one is addressing what is essentially an existential threat to our country – the unregulated bodabodas.

None of the candidates of the major parties mentions bodabodas anywhere, not in their manifestos, and not in their campaigns. Yet the danger of bodabodas to Uganda’s social fabric is a clear and present one.

Any country faced with a clear and present danger will take immediate steps to alleviate it. Former American president George W. Bush declared a ‘war on terror’ after the 9/11 attacks, seeing Al Qaeda and affiliates posing a clear and present danger to the US.

Israel might have disproportionately retaliated to the Hamas attack of October 2023, but that arguably posed the greatest danger to the Jewish state in decades, and it had to act decisively. Russia’s Vladimir Putin used dubious mathematics and rewrote history to suit his aims, but he did declare the existence of Ukraine a clear and present danger to Russia, and so declared his infamous ‘special military operation’. Whether it was a success or not is not the point.

The argument here is not whether those were justified in their actions, but that once they saw a clear and present danger, they acted upon it. Will Uganda ever act on the bodaboda menace?

Just a few days before that walk, a Uganda Management Institute (UMI) student, Najib Kimbugwe, was knocked dead by a bodaboda as he crossed the road opposite the UMI gate. There is a zebra crossing, and it is clearly marked. But the bodaboda rider, who knocked Kimbugwe, ignored it, and probably sped off after that. Just a few days earlier, another student, Judith Agaba from the Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology, was also knocked dead by a bodaboda. And it continues day after day after day. But the campaigns for elective office go on unabated.

Unregulated bodabodas pose another danger. It is extremely disheartening to be at traffic lights, and watch as bodabodas ride without any mind. And what is worse, traffic police officers are present, but do nothing.

When you stop at the traffic lights, and they turn green, you have to wait for almost a minute as bodabodas from all directions cross in front of you. But by the time you can move, the lights will have turned red. Any wonder Ugandan drivers don’t bother about red lights?

Kampala Capital City Authority has been talking about a major signalling project in Kampala for ages, and how traffic in Kampala will be orderly once it is up and running. How is it going to happen if the bodabodas are doing whatever they want?

And then there are our very clever traffic officers, who override the lights and direct traffic any way they want. They typically can hold one line stagnant for up to 30 minutes, and when they let you go, guess what happens next? A horde of bodabodas from all directions start crossing, and you can’t go anywhere, and when they are clear and you can move, the traffic officer stops your line again. It is a real wonder that there are very few incidents of road rage in this country.

And there is another, even more frightening aspect to this bodaboda calamity. If those riders can ignore traffic laws, and the police officers do nothing to them, why would they respect any other law?

It is common knowledge that if you get involved in an accident involving a bodaboda, be very polite with the pesky little guy. Or a hundred of them will gather in the blink of an eye, and they have been known to inflict the ultimate punishment.

It is estimated that there are about 1.5 million bodaboda riders in Uganda, most of them young. It looks like it is the easiest form of employment available to the youth.

Now, there are about 20 million Ugandans between the ages of 18 and 40; about half are female, which means bodaboda riders make up about 15% of that demographic. But almost 80% of Ugandans will ride on those bodabodas as they break all the laws they can find.

So, frighteningly, a very big percentage of Ugandans are okay with ignoring the established laws. In essence, we have a whole generation growing up with no respect for law and order.

Add those who think they have impunity, the arrogant politicians, and the ‘gamba n’ogus’.

Would you question my sanity if I say we are headed to the Wild West?

Yet, the campaigns go on. And that elephant, which everyone is ignoring, grows larger and larger.