Governor Babatunde Fashola was right on cue when he described Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) officials as ‘people Lagosians love to hate’. In 12 years, LASTMA has carved a niche for itself despite the excesses of some of its officials. But the government is doing everything to whip these bad eggs into line. ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE reports.
Mrs Agnes Daniel could not believe her eyes. Since she was late for a meeting, she thought she could park across the road and ask her office guard to pick up her car. She had not crossed the road to her office at Ketu, Lagos, before some Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) officials arrived on the scene in their towing van. Her office guard met them about to tow the car. They rebuffed all entreaties that he had come to pick up the car.
The woman paid N10, 000 to get the car released. “I stopped taking my car to the office since then,” Mrs. Daniel said. “It was,” she continued, “a bitter experience for me. That experience left me with the impression that LASTMA has become the cash cow for many of its workers.”
Francis Adebambo, a 40-year-old marketer, is another Lagosian with a sad experience. He was apprehended about 7.am, two years ago, and his vehicle impounded on the Dopemu Bridge by LASTMA officials for negotiating the bridge through a one-way under the bridge.
Adebambo denied the offence, but his denial incensed the LASTMA men.
Adebambo said he was rudely shoved out of his car, as a LASTMA official took over the driving. Another LASTMA official, who was in mufti, sat at the passenger’s side. He was asked to report at LASTMA’s Egbeda office to retrieve his car. The matter, however, took another turn when he reported at the office and discovered that his two android phones and earpiece were missing. The two offficials denied seeing the phones.
Angry, he abandoned the car there and opted for legal redress to recover his stolen property valued at N150, 000.
At Ojota, all the side windows and rear glass of an Oshodi-bound commercial bus trying to avoid being apprehended for driving against traffic, were shattered by four LASTMA officials, who pursued the driver.
At place in Oregun Lagos, a couple attending a wedding returned to discover that their car had been towed by LASTMA officials. The man said he had been directed to park at the spot by one of the LASTMA officials deployed in controlling traffic on the venue. Over the years, LASTMA has enlarged its scope, covering all the 57 local government areas in the state. Its activities are complemented by the LASTMA Special Traffic Mayors (STM), an elite cream of volunteers, recognised by law, to play a role in keeping traffic moving in the state.
Some accidents and deaths have trailed the excesses of LASTMA officials. A motorcyclist lost his life at Ikotun, a Lagos surburb recently. He was trying to avoid being caught by a LASTMA official, when he crashed into a vehicle.
At Iponri, a LASTMA official was crushed by a fleeing commercial bus driver, as he attempted to arrest a car owner for flouting traffic regulations. The arrested car owner regained her freedom at the Lagos High Court, as video evidence from eyewitnesses, exonerated her of culpability in the death of the LASTMA official.
Established in 2002 by the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration to tackle the traffic bottleneck in the state, LASTMA has become the most feared of all traffic agencies.
If LASTMA had some powers during the Tinubu era, it was invested with more, with the amended Law 2008, by the Babatunde Fashola administration. At some point, LASTMA was speculated to be another revenue generating agency with a fixed target.
Government’s stand on traffic rules, which, among others, stipulate a psychiatric test, as penalties, has created an opportunity for LASTMA officials to exploit traffic offenders’ ignorance and milk others who want to get off the hook by ‘settling’ to secure their release.
Except where tickets are written, money paid to LASTMA is often diverted, with some LASTMA man have become emboldened to demand and negotiate with traffic offenders despite government’s insistence that no one should have any cash transaction with any public official.
Despite these challenges, Fashola has been canvassing strict compliance with traffic rules and LASTMA’s ecpected to enforce same.
For him, the task of keeping the over 20 million people in Lagos moving must not be left to chance.
With two million vehicles using the 9,100 roads built on a land mass of 3, 577 square kilometres, the volume of traffic in Lagos is above the national average and over the traffic prevalent in more than 10 states of the country.
This is why Fashola believes the agency must be appropriately empowered to cope with keeping the state moving.
The governor knows there are bad eggs in in the agency, but he believes it must repositioned to overcome the excesses of motorists.
At the launch of the Lagos State Enforcement Training Institute, Fashola challenged LASTMA officials to rededicate themselves to better service and improve their perception in the public space.
He said: “You are the people that Lagosians love to hate. It is your responsibility to turn that into a love-love relationship. Lagos State Traffic Management Authority is a concept that has extended beyond the confines of Lagos. It is a good brand which we must improve upon. It is a brand which only dedicated men can improve on.”
Fashola believed Lagosians’ anger against LASTMA is not a verdict to disband the traffic army that has become a toast of other states who have come to understudy it and are deploying it to control traffic in their domains. The solution, he said, is to increase its capacity and revamp its image.
He said: “The people of Lagos already recognise that you are a necessary part of their lives. In my several conversations with the people, they all agree that you add value, what they are saying is simply a challenge to make it better because we had already done the hard work. Each time they complain, they are endorsing our capacity to do it and they have asked me to ask you to do it well.”
It is not only the governor that believes in what LASTMA is doing. His Commissioner for Transportation, Comrade Kayode Opeifa, does too. Opeifa believes LASTMA is the best public policy the state has come up with and the best dividend of democracy.
To critics of the agency, Opeifa said the option is to withdraw LASTMA from the roads for a day and see how chaotic the roads would be within hours.
He expressed the readiness of the government to combat the bad eggs within the establishment and ensure that committed ones operate in a conducive environment.
He said the state’s traffic Law 2012 would improve the agency’s efficiency.
Last year, the government began a mandatory Career Evaluation Training Programme (CETP) for selected LASTMA officers. The officers and their Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI) colleagues were taken through more institutional training and standards to change their orientation.
The need for the training was reinforced by the Senior Special Assistant on Transport Education Dr. Mariam Masha, the CETP coordinator, who said the training would enhance the officers’ efficiency and achieve the goals of law enforcement.
Masha said the first set of 3,311 officers of LASTMA and KAI graduates of the CETP would be the pilot of the change that the government envisaged in LASTMA, which is suffering from a low perception by Lagosians.
Masha as the head of transport education has pioneered innovative ideas ranging from strategic meetings with schools, and frontline clubs and prominent associations all aimed at changing peoples’ perception of the agency, which as at 2011 become a burden on the government.
She said: “Our officers needed to know that for any society to thrive, allowing the citizens to live full, meaningful lives, law and order must prevail and that everyone must appreciate that laws are made by man for his protection and preservation and must therefore observe his civic duty and accept the basic principle of obeying the law and protecting the officers who enforce it.”
To ensure this, Masha counselled that officers needed not intimidate others into behaving, when they themselves are misbehaving.
“Let me remind you of the tools of your trade.
They are the law which empowers you to work, your physical body as you carry no weapons and importantly, your ability to positively influence the members of the community you serve to do the right thing. They must trust and respect you. It is mutual, as you must do same,” Masha further emphasised.
She reminded that it was in recognition of their significant role in keeping the state moving that the governor recently approved their conversion into the state civil service and the creation of the law enforcement cadre in the civil service for LASTMA and other sister agencies in the state, which entitles them to all the benefits every civil servants has including pension rights under the contributory pension scheme.
The arrest of a dismissed LASTMA official caught carrying out an illegal operation recently, and another, caught on tape demanding for a bribe are indicators that the task of reforming the traffic army in the state remains enormous.
While the government is not denying that there might still be such elements, it assures that it has adequate capacity to effect change and transform the agency.
Much of what it claims to be doing are still to manifest, but lagosians are patiently waiting to see a transformed LASTMA on the streets in the metropolis.
