CityLab Daily: Nigeria’s Capital Blames Rickshaws for Crime
Also today: Mapping the ‘super speeders’ of NYC, and marine sanctuaries threaten California’s offshore wind goals.
Drivers of rickshaws, known as keke Napep, feel unfairly targeted by the government of Abuja.
Photographer: Dawali David/Bloomberg
In Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja, rickshaws are essential for getting around absent a working public transit system. But officials are planning to ban the three-wheelers, citing their role as getaway vehicles in a crime and kidnapping crisis that’s engulfed Nigeria’s second-richest city.
The rickety vehicles struggle to climb the city's hills at a maximum speed of just 43 miles per hour. And rickshaw drivers who have come to the capital to escape poverty say the government is making them scapegoats for its own inability to protect residents, Nduka Orjinmo reports. Today on CityLab: Crime Is Engulfing Abuja, and Authorities Are Blaming Rickshaws