About 17 convicted traffic offenders, made up of 15 men and two women were brought to the premises of Lagos State Secretariat, Alausa, Ikeja on Thursday for community service imposed on them by the Special Offences Court, sitting at Oshodi after being found guilty as charged.
They were engaged in clearing of bushes and wastes in the Secretariat premises.
Spokesperson of Lagos State Transport Management Authority (LASTMA), Mr. Mahmud Hassan, who spoke with newsmen as the convicts were undertaking the community service, disclosed that the offences committed by the affected people ranged from non-use of seat belts, dropping of passengers at unauthorized places, driving on the BRT Corridors and so forth.
According to Hassan, who said the convicts would still be sent on the streets of Lagos to serve their term at the “discretion of the officer that is in charge of that department,” pointed out that the lesson to potential traffic offenders in the state was that they too would face similar action whenever they were caught by the hands of the law.
“You are seeing them for the first time here at the Secretariat because Secretariat is part and parchel of Lagos State. So what we are doing is for them to carry out the court’s decision of performing community service and where they carry out that community service is at the discretion of officer that is in charge of that department.
“They have been taken to other places before coming here and I think after here, you would see them on the road also performing community service,” LASTMA Public Affairs Officer said.
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“The lesson I want people to learn is one, for we to have orderliness in the society all of us must try as much as possible to be on the side of the law. We must respect law if we want our society to grow, if we want our society to develop so that we can take our rightful place in the comity of nations. So it is only by abiding by the law.
“We must not do anything that would take us to primitive age where every man tries to be law to himself and it’s a kind of survival of the fittest. And by so doing, we are also passing message to other potential offenders that when they are caught by the hands of the law, they too will face similar action,” he added.
Speaking further, Hassan reminded that both traffic lights and Zebra Crossings were not decoration and beatifications, saying that LASTMA had in the past arrested violators and would still continue to do so.
He said it was an aberration for government to spend millions of naira to install traffic lights and also make Zebra Crossing for the safety of pedestrians but the agency would still send its officers to those points to force motorists to obey rules guiding them.
“Those are the men that we supposed to deploy to other places, but it’s not supposed to be like that, but that is what we have now,” he lamented.
Hassan, however, said LASTMA on its part would continue with its enlightenment campaign by reaching out to the various stakeholders, including religious bodies, organizations, clubs, among others in order to secure what he termed “high level of compliance with the traffic laws” in Lagos State.
“On our own part, we will continue to do that enlightenment, we will continue to reach out to the various stakeholders, we will continue to talk to religious bodies, organizations, clubs and so on and so forth so that we can have high level of compliance with the traffic laws in the state,” he said.
