Olatunji Ololade
ROAD travel, in Lagos, is an exhaustive blow-out; a romp of popping male muscles and bursting female globes. Chaos rules the metropolis and runs the dusty suburbs amok. Enter the Lagos State Traffic Monitoring Authority (LASTMA), presumably to sanitise the dystopic motif. Is LASTMA as effective as its cracked up to be?
Kayode Opeifa, former Commissioner of Transport, in response to the first part of this article argued that, LASTMA, as an organisation, and its officers are not violent.
He said, “They are a civil enforcement organisation, whose officers carry no weapon but deploy their skills and societal recognition. Should we have a case of one or few incidences that is unacceptable, it can best be described as isolated cases and regrettable in the context of the society they operate. Their training in traffic management is about the best in Nigeria and they are constantly being exposed to attitudinal and human relations training.”
Speaking for the government, he went on to say, that, “LASTMA remains one of the master-strokes of public service policy in Nigeria in the last 20 years. It is being replicated in most states of the country today with help from the Lagos establishment. The government is always concerned, worried and apologetic when any of its workforce misbehaves. In your own case I personally feel your pain and I am very sure that the GM and the organisation as usual, will ensure all those involved are identified, disciplined and retrained as necessary in line with LASTMA and public service extant rules.”
The former transport commissioner and ex-Team Leader of the Presidential Committee on Clearing of Apapa Port and Access Roads argued that the misdemeanour of a few bad eggs shouldn’t be used to tar the good works of the coastal city’s traffic law enforcement agency.
His rebuttal comes in the wake of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s warning to the 1,017 newly-recruited LASTMA officers to shun corruption and uncivilised conduct. Sanwo-Olu gave the warning during the Passing Out Parade (POP) of the newly recruited officers last week, in Lagos.
“Corruption is not limited to extortion or financial inducement. Indiscipline in office, harassment of citizens will also be frowned at.”
Going forward, concrete steps must be taken to prevent a recurrence of high-handedness and violent physical attacks on Lagosians by corrupt LASTMA officers in episodes that Mr. Opeifa identified as “isolated cases and regrettable.”
At times, its not the driver or private citizen that ends up as the casualty of chaos, Lagos has lost some LASTMA officers too to road rage.
The agency authorities must institute more inventive strategies at apprehending traffic violators, including those that deploy violence against uniformed operatives. The state could install functional traffic cameras, street/highway lamps, CCTV and reinforce punitive measures against defaulters.
Stringent punishment must equally be meted out to uncouth and violent LASTMA officers making up the fraction responsible for what LASTMA authorities consider negligible cases of mayhem.
While counselling LASTMA operatives to desist from taking unnecessary action against the citizenry, Governor Sanwo-Olu said, “Let us be civil, let us be firm and be decisive. Do not leave any room for the public to doubt your integrity, your honesty and your commitment to traffic management. You have been given an opportunity to serve the people of Lagos State to the best of your ability, and this opportunity must be seen as a privilege.”
His reference to “privilege,” “integrity” and “unnecessary action” is instructive. It connotes the gamut of LASTMA’s responsibilities to the public and the latter’s expectations of the traffic monitoring agency.
Of course, many a government scribe and apologist would argue that Lagos drivers are lawless thus the need for extreme punitive measures to check their excesses, but like I said in the first part of this piece, LASTMA officers must be reorientated on the benefits of achieving balance and harmony between instruction received and implementation.
They must be re-sensitized against yielding to anarchic consciousness; they must be taught to scorn signals from lust and rage, and instead, consult tact and brain.
At the moment, the traffic situation of Lagos is a Darwinian spectacle of aggression of the eaters and the eaten. The rabid struggle for right of way and law enforcement debases service and order to the will-to-power. Public peace and ethics are corrupted and assailed by pagan instinct.
Lagos deserves a proactive, humane and ethically sound LASTMA, whose officers truly consider their job as both a privilege and an opportunity to serve the people of Lagos to the best of their ability.
And to whom much is accorded, much is expected; if Lagos wishes for commuters to be completely law-abiding, the state government must do its part to make transportation easier. Government application of traffic rules are more punitive than preventative, and this is justifiable perhaps in the context of the society where the laws are interpreted. But I would suggest that the government evolves a preventative cum punitive model of traffic management.
For instance, the government could provide lay-bys, where motorists with faulty vehicles and those involved in accidents can pull up, and thus avoid causing unnecessary gridlock. LASTMA officials must subsequently be sensitised to the actual demands of their job, which is to ease Lagos’ traffic problem and not compound it.
Lagos needs to repair the dangerous gulley at Obadeyi-Ajala where at least two large trucks somersault every week, endangering lives and causing serious gridlock. Then, there is the deadly issue of LASTMA absence at the Obadeyi-Ajala, Runsewe Estate and Ahmadiyya Bus Stop, where both private and commercial drivers speed against the run of traffic thus constituting serious hazard.
Several times, LASTMA officers of the Pen Cinema division, turn a blind eye to commercial bus (danfo) drivers hurtling through the red light while they swoop on defaulting private vehicle owners at the Oke Koto junction in Agege.
The officers have gained a notoriety for harassing defaulting private motorists even as they ignore commercial transporters guilty of the same offence, often to the chagrin of bystanders and commuters stuck in the traffic caused by their antics.
The malady persists at the Oja Oba, Abule Egba, and Fagba junctions. You could be forgiven for thinking that some LASTMA officers are involved in a gentleman’s agreement with commercial transporters, to ignore the latter’s excesses.
Of course, this writer is aware of the few exceptional cases in which mindless commercial transporters assault, and sometimes, kill diligent LASTMA officers for daring to do their work.
Notwithstanding, it is dangerous to espouse the trite narrative of the eternal lawlessness of Lagos drivers; not every Lagos driver is delinquent, as we have sterling LASTMA officers, so do we have motorists who are law-abiding.
Lest we forget that it is very impossible for any LASTMA officer to arrest or prosecute the ward, relative or associate of a bigwig. When the violent LASTMA officer arrested my brother, I bluntly told him that he must desist from giving the operative any bribe and instead follow him to the office to pay the stipulated fine.
I doubt if that same officer would arrest and assault the ward of a serving Lagos governor or LASTMA’s DG, if either were caught violating traffic rules.
Lagos must reinvest in progressive revitalization of LASTMA, given its significance to the stability and fortunes of the state.
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