In the isolated settlements of the northern regions, you will encounter donkeys, a specie on the verge of extinction. These animals are burdened with loads, and their owners follow them, wielding short sticks to maintain control over any donkey that attempts to stray from the path or impede the pace of the journey.
In northern Nigeria, donkeys were indispensable for rural farmers transporting their goods and agricultural products across different areas.
On the flip side in southern Nigeria, it is the bicycle that plays a similar role for most rural women farmers.
While the origin of the donkey can be traced back to divine creation, however, that of the bicycle can be traced back to human ingenuity credited to Karl von Drais, a German inventor in 1817.
In many developed cities, bikes are used as a way of relaxation or keeping fit and also a good way to get around. In Africa, it has become a lifeline for rural transportation, serving as a crucial tool for navigating challenging terrains.
According to the Geography of Transport Systems, 100 million bicycles are produced each year.
Figures from Statista (a global data and business intelligence platform) showing the distribution of households owning a bicycle in Nigeria in 2020 by zone indicated that about 24.6 percent of the households in the South-South geopolitical zone owned a bicycle. This is second only to the North-West, which came first with 31.2 percent.
Delta State, located in the South-South zone, is one of the states in the zone with a large number of families with bicycles that are primarily used by women, as opposed to the North West, where the majority of users are males.
During a recent visit to Ndemili Umusadege in Ndokwa West LGA, Weekend Trust observed that many families rely significantly on bicycles and motorcycles to get to their farms.
Hardly a minute passes by that a woman does not pass with load on a bicycle in the community.
Miss Perpetual Uzor tells Weekend Trust that bicycles and motorcycles are essential aspects of their everyday life and are required by practically every household in rural farming villages.
Some households own more than two bicycles, such as Miss Uzor’s, who began riding before the age of ten.
“If you want to fetch water, you can go with it; you can also go to the farm with it,” she added.
Without bicycles, life would have been awful for many women who rely on this low-cost mode of transportation to go long distances to their farms.
“I can’t tell how many bikes we have here because most houses have more than three or four. Both men and women use the bikes as a means of transportation to the farm or market,” Perpetual asserted.
Just as we were conversing with Miss Perpetual, a young teenage girl who gave her name as Adibi Ndubenu pushed her bicycle in the blazing midday sun owing to a chain issue.
She was carrying a tuber of yam, cassava and a few other crops. The young girl had walked a distance from where the bicycle developed a fault, pushing it and crops home sweating and almost leaning on it in an exhaustive manner.
“I’m used to it,” she said but appeared tired and determined to reach home.
Madam Ijeoma Chibeze, who is over 50 years old, told this reporter that a single bicycle is frequently used by different members of the family for different purposes throughout the day.
On the road, older riders with load-carrying bicycles are more prevalent, while young teenagers riding bicycles from the farm are also observed.
Madam Ijeoma Chibeze reckoned that the transport needs of a household in the rural communities in the area can’t always be met by one bicycle. “Women, especially, are more vulnerable with loads including firewood,” adding that load carrying is the most desired bicycle feature for many households.
Since she is married and lives in a rural area, Mrs Chibeze must go to the farm to bring firewood and to the stream or wherever the borehole is to get water for her family. And, during market days, she takes crops to several communities, some of which are a distance away to make and buy something the family needs.
An elderly woman who did not want her name, face, or image to be mentioned or featured in the media because her children, who are doing well in the city, do not want to see her ride bicycles to the farm, stated that poor roads connecting farms and communities make bicycles or motorcycles a necessity.
The widespread usage of bicycles and motorcycles, according to Luis Osogbue, a desk officer for one of the local agricultural programs, is due to the fact that many towns lack motorable, adequate access roads that would alleviate the strain of transportation.
“In fact, bicycles and motorbikes are their major means of movement or going to the farm to collect their harvested produce,” he said.
“You can hardly see any woman that cannot ride a bike. Even as small as ten years old, you’ll see them riding a bike,” Osogbue continued.
Speaking in Pidgin, Mrs. Regina Ndukwe stated that without a bicycle, life would have been “very difficult,” particularly for someone like her whose farm is far from home.
“How will I carry all these woods and my farm crops from my farm to the house at my age?” She asked, noting that she has been riding a bicycle for over 40 years—even before she got married.
“We use this to transport palm fruits, wood, yams to the markets, and more. We use the bicycle to carry anything we need to bring home from the farm. My son has one, my spouse has one, and so do I. Everyone will bring something home with them when we visit the farm,” she further explained.
With the current cost of transportation, both Mrs Regina and Ijeoma said it would have been very difficult to pay for transportation to bring their harvests home.
They claimed that even with the current transportation options, it is cheaper to bring their crops home because they do not have to purchase fuel for the bicycle.
“We don’t buy fuel for the bicycle, and even if it spoils, it’s cheaper to fix it,” Ijeoma stated, adding that it will be difficult for the bicycle to disappear from the communities in years to come because it is part of their daily lives.
“Most families that you see around these communities and many other communities elsewhere have bicycles. The ones that are doing better or have money, buy motorcycles. Not all of us can afford motorcycles anyway,” she said with a smile while waving at three women who were passing on a bike.
A middle-aged woman who didn’t want her picture taken painted a picture that necessitates the use of bicycles.
“Our farms are mostly in places with only narrow pathways, it is only in places like where we are now (pointing at the untarred road) in the community that you can drive a car. The farms don’t have this type of road. So, if you don’t have a bicycle or bike, how are you going to bring things like yam, banana, plantain or cassava home? Many people don’t have cars and those who have private cars cannot go to the farms with them. That is the reason why we decided to buy cheap bicycles to use,” she said.
“We met our parents riding bicycles and as we grew up, we joined them,” she smiled, adding that many young people now prefer motorcycles to bicycles.
“If you check, most of those you see with bicycles now are old women. Young people like myself prefer motorcycles because you don’t have to stress yourself peddling it. And you can actually carry more loads with the bike than the bicycles and it is faster. You can get home within a few minutes but by bicycle, it will take you longer and you will be so tired by the time you get home,” she added.
Twenty-nine-year-old Perpetual Uzor however says the paradigm is gradually shifting with families whose children are financially better off, buying motorcycles for their parents to use for their farming activities. Some older parents, according to her, however, found it difficult to change from using bicycles to motorcycles.
In such families, Miss Uzor said you will see the younger ones riding motorcycles while the older folks clutch to their bicycles, which they consider cheaper to use without fuel.
According to the National Stakeholders Forum on Bicycle Transportation, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, “Bicycle was the major means of transport 40-50 years ago in Nigeria and a major source of pride but progressive development gave rise to the “class” attitude stemming from individual guest for materialism and consequently led to the abandonment of bicycle, leaving only about 8 percent families in Nigeria who could not afford beyond a bicycle to own one.”
While bicycle usage might be declining in the cities, it remains one of the most versatile means of transportation playing a critical role in the economy of agrarian communities that suffer the brunt of poor or total absence of feeder roads confronting many smallholder farmers.
Given how important bicycles are to farmers’ rural lives nationwide, academics have been considering several methods to make the system better.
In their 2018 study on the “development of bicycle and motorcycle carriage for goods mobility in rural areas of Nigeria,” researchers like Olukayode Oyesiku and others pointed out that the difficulties of transporting forestry products and agricultural loads have essentially been the burden of rural residents.
The researcher, however, noted that “little efforts have been made to have an adaptive mobility frame (attached to bicycles and motorcycles) to carry goods and products from the point of harvest to the point of sales (the markets), a situation that leads to systematic rot of agriculture products on the farms, leading to low revenue and productivity of the rural people.”
Data from the World Integrated Trade Solution shows that Nigeria imported about 871,200 bicycles and other cycles in 2023, coming mostly from China, India and other countries.
According to Statista, the Nigerian market for bicycles of all kinds is expected to expand by 3.22 per cent between 2025 and 2029, reaching a market value of $77.95 million by that year.