LAGOS State seems to be preventing a lost purpose against the risk of business motorbike operators. Amidst the 2019 wellknown election anxiety, those motorcyclists – called okada in neighborhood parlance – went haywire in the Ejigbo place of the town. In their loads, they stormed a police station there. For a period of time, the riders plunged the neighborhood into chaos. Although the invaders have been repelled after a police reinforcement from other divisions, their audacity speaks volumes approximately the dangerous nuisance industrial motorcyclists constitute in the so-called “Centre of Excellence.” Undoubtedly, the lawlessness of the motorcycle riders has to turn out to be unbearable.
They flout all regarded visitors’ regulations inside the book with uncommon impunity. Emboldened by using weak regulatory enforcement and absence of punishment their her misconduct, they’ve turned Lagos into their playground. They may be visible on foremost highways with multiple passengers, riding in opposition to the visitors, without a defensive helmet. Their push aside for site visitors’ lighting is known. At the slightest hint of confrontation with other road users, they congregate into a mob, taking the regulation into their very own palms. In line with this, they invaded the Ejigbo Police Station around 11 pm on March 2. Claiming that a police patrol van knocked down their individuals, they immediately armed themselves with assorted guns and threatened to incinerate the station. After being repelled at the station’s gate, they burnt down a patrol automobile parked outside the premises. These hoodlums have crossed the pink line. The police ought to prosecute the nineteen suspects they arrested all through the mayhem. Really, numerous problems are undermining the efforts to make Lagos a mega-metropolis.
Commuters do not bounce on bikes during visitors’ snarls in current towns like London, Paris, New York, Melbourne, or Tokyo. That is inconceivable. Lagos have to now not be exclusive if Nigeria’s industrial hub is surely interested in joining that exalted league. It should forestall tolerating this belligerent, lawless group in the call of imparting transportation services. All the gains made whilst the Lagos State Traffic Law 2012 was enacted have almost been absolutely reversed inside the ultimate three years. That regulation prohibited commercial motorcycle operations on 475 highways and bridges within the kingdom. Significantly, the enforcement of this law, first of all, returned a measure of sanity to Lagos roads. This turned into whilst Babatunde Fashola becomes governor. All motorcycles were banned from the roads from 10 pm.
With powerful implementation, the claim of the motorcyclists inside the Ejigbo incident that their individuals were knocked down round eleven pm might in no way have arisen. But, curiously, with the advent of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode in 2015, the bike – and tricycle – risk back with a bang. Following many months of dereliction, motorcyclists have invaded all of the nooks and crannies of the state. Though Ambode’s tenure is expiring in May, the governor still has time to rejuvenate the state’s traffic law implementation. Unfortunately, there had been loud warning signs and symptoms that industrial motorcyclists had been able to hijack the authority of the nation authorities. But, inexplicably, the country government and the police omitted them.
The result is now apparent. In a shocking incident that depicted this in May 2018, motorcyclists went at the rampage in Ibese, Ikorodu location of the state, after alleging that police brought on the demise of a motorcyclist at a nearby checkpoint. Instead of going through the ordinary method of reporting the incident and allowing the law to take precedence, they mobilised and attacked the Ibese Police Station with bottles and stones in an try to burn it down. Naturally, the police answered. So, the gang retreated, but discovered a prize in a police patrol van, which they promptly set ablaze. They chased away a group of Federal Road Safety Corps officers who got here to the scene to assist in restoring normalcy.
In a manner, this brought about the then kingdom Commissioner of Police, Edgal Imohimi, to offer a closing date that, with the aid of mid-June 2018, police would “start the big arrest of business motorbike operators” and prosecute individuals who violate the kingdom’s visitors laws. But not anything got here out of it. Instead, the operators have become more daring, riding anywhere and at every time of the day. Now that the threat has reached its height, Ambode and the Lagos Police Command have to prevent giving the impression that they’re helpless. Because in their unruly mode of operations and to offer the Nigerian capital a facelift, Nasir el-Rufai, the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, had during his tenure among 2003 and 2007 banned industrial motorcyclists from Abuja’s principal business district.
Having enacted a similar law, Lagos has lots to gain by uaithfully implementing it as it bbecomesdone within the FCT. The Ambode authorities must robustly put in force the other salient provisions of that law, specifically the ones at the misconduct of touts who harass bus drivers at bus stops, disrupt union sports at motor parks and people who force against the visitors or use digital devices at the wheels. Since there is a law in region, it’s far incumbent on the police to put into effect it. To catalyze a respectable society, the police need to do their process without worry or favor.