Boko Haram has carried out assassinations, shootings and attacks with home-made explosives in recent months.

Most of the attacks have been around Maiduguri, a northeastern city of more than 1.2 million people where more than 150 have been killed this year. The attackers often throw explosives and fire shots from motorbikes, a key mode of transport in many Nigerian cities. “The ban on motorbikes is a hard, difficult and painful one but necessary to enhance the fight against Boko Haram. We are not unmindful of the hardships this decision may cause to our people,” Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima told Reuters.

He said 5,000 tricycles would be given out to Maiduguri residents and extra buses would be deployed to outer townships to bring people to work in the town center.

Maiduguri sits in one of the poorest areas of Nigeria, close to the border with Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The economy relies on food and textiles sold from markets. Motorbike taxis usually throng the town’s streets.

“I hope the ban will not last long as people are finding it difficult to move around,” said Halima Usman, a housewife who waited four hours for a taxi to take her into the town center.

Attacks by Boko Haram have increased in intensity and moved further afield in recent months, including a bomb outside the national police headquarters in the capital Abuja last month. Bomb blasts in the north have replaced militant attacks on oil facilities hundreds of kilometers away in the southern Niger Delta as the main security threat in Nigeria. The United States and European Union have condemned the violence.

Without the competition of motorbikes, taxi fares have risen by 150 percent, Maiduguri residents said. Boko Haram’s attacks threaten to bring the local economy to a standstill, in a region where many live on less than $2 a day.

“If the ban will bring peace to Maiduguri then I welcome it, whatever the price,” said Usman Bashir, a civil servant who would usually ride his motorbike to work.