There seems to be no end in sight in the tussle between the security agents with Lagos State government and men of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) SURE-P/FERMA Federal Task Force on who has the right to control federal roads in the state.
The FERMA Federal Task Force last Thursday said it has the power by law, (going by a subsisting Federal High Court ruling), to man all federal roads anywhere in the country, including Lagos State.
FERMA Task Force National Director of Publicity, Mr. Olawale Oyeboh said though LASTMA has been doing a great job in getting the state moving, the federal agency is by law empowered to manage traffic on all federal roads.
Lagos, being the former nation’s capital, has 117 federal roads. It has the largest federal road network in the country after Abuja.
On May 12, men identified as officers of the FERMA Federal Task Force, took over Ojota, Alausa interchange, and ikorodu road among other federal roads in the state in an operation that took the state government by surprise. Men of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) had to withdraw from such roads to avoid a possible clash.
The Federal Task Force, however, retreated following a rebuttal by the Lagos State government which described the outfit as “faceless and unknown.”
The FERMA Federal Task Force returned to the office of the SURE-P/FERMA at the Lagos end of the old toll gate where they continued with their training.
Matters, however, got worse on May 28, when men of the state Special Task Force on Environment, Sanitation and other offences headed by Bayo Suleiman, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), stormed the SURE-P/FERMA office of the Federal Task Force in a reprisal attack for the alleged attack on some of its men when FERMA’s task force attempted to arrest a driver who illegally used the dedicated BRT lane at Ketu.
In the melee that saw the SURE-P/FERMA offices vandalised, no less than 200 Federal Task Force officers undergoing training were arrested and taken to the Lagos Task Force office, from where they were transferred to the Lagos State Police Command.
Suleiman told reporters that he swooped on the task force’s office to avenge the attack on his men. “If this attack is not rejected now, it may degenerate,” he said.
In a telephone interview last Thursday, Oyeboh said the arrested men regained their freedom at about 10 pm the same day, on the orders of the Inspector -General of Police, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar .
Oyeboh, who lamented the degree of violence by the Suleiman-led task force, blamed ignorance for the high handedness of the state against the federal agency.
A Federal High Court in a judgment in 2004, Oyeboh said, ordered states’ owned traffic management outfits such as men of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) out of federal roads.
The Federal Task Force spokesman said the judgment, which is yet to be appealed by any government including Lagos, gave FERMA the sole right, not only to maintain all federal roads, but to manage traffic on such roads anywhere in the country.
He said the agency has lost millions of naira worth of property in the “sponsored attack on its office,” as thugs invaded the office to loot. According to him, policemen accompanying the state officials willfully damaged properties in FERMA office.
He said the National Coordinator for SURE-P/ FERMA Task Force Alhaji Abdulrazak Rafiu Otto has directed men of the agency to continue with their training ahead of their assignment to federal roads later in the year.
