Public Relations Officer of the Okada Riders Association, Evans Wadja, said for years, operating an Okada in Ghana meant operating outside the law and outside any formal support system too.
Speaking on Lifestyle with Rosie, Wadja pushed back firmly on the narrative that riders alone are to blame for the chaos long associated with the business.
“The nation called Ghana disappointed Okada riders. A young person like me, who doesn’t have any business doing in this country, found myself not wanting to do anything bad. Let me do Okada. And the nation decided not to support me, not to train me,” he explained.
Wadja’s argument centres on a simple point: no formal institution has ever existed in Ghana to train commercial motorbike riders, yet thousands turned to the trade as a response to unemployment.
Without training, he said, infractions such as riders failing to stop at red lights were often framed by the public as recklessness rather than as a predictable consequence of being left to learn the road without instruction.
He also pointed to a tense history between riders and police. Citing a 2023 letter the Association sent to then-Inspector General of Police George Akuffo Dampare, Wadja said riders committed to obeying traffic signals but asked for fairer treatment at checkpoints, alleging some riders began avoiding stops at red lights specifically to dodge harassment rather than out of disregard for the law.
Host pushes back
Host Rosemary Aboagye Ntim challenged the framing directly, noting that a motorcycle is legally a vehicle subject to the same road rules as any other, and that she had personally seen an Okada rider carrying two children without helmets just days before the interview, after the legalisation process had already begun.
Wadja’s response that the rider in question may not have been an Okada operator at all, went unverified in the moment, underscoring a tension in the conversation: that the Association’s claims to representativeness and discipline still outrun what can currently be checked on the ground.
Vetting against criminal records
Pressed on how the Association plans to weed out riders who use motorbikes for crime, Wadja described a membership vetting process requiring a Ghana Card, two guarantors, one from the applicant’s family, and verification of the rider’s base station, with the Association liaising with the Ghana Police Service to check for existing criminal records before issuing a membership card.
“We need the media, the Ghana Police Service, and the citizens. Okada Riders alone cannot do it,” he said
It is an acknowledgement, in effect, that self-regulation by an association with no statutory enforcement power can only go so far, and that the credibility of the entire legalisation push may ultimately rest on how well government, police and riders coordinate once the new rules take effect.