Tag: Tanker drivers

Why would anyone burn banks to settle scores?

After a relative quiet from their end these past months, Lagosians were jolted once again by irate tanker drivers who set two banks ablaze in the Apapa area on Wednesday. The banks – Diamond Bank and Sterling Bank – were burnt by the mob for failing to hand over a mobile policeman who had earlier killed one of the tanker drivers for allegedly refusing to give him bribe. An eye witness, Sunday Abiodun, gives an account of what happened: “”This morning, a police officer attached to Diamond Bank, asked one of the truck drivers operating here at Apapa port, to give him N1,000 and the man said he was not the owner of the vehicle parked in front of the bank, that he just came to pick his phone inside the truck. While asking the man to give him the money or move his vehicle, the next thing we had was a gun shot and the man died instantly in front of the bank.”

A policeman who witnessed the incident also recalled: “Those tanker drivers are very irrational. When the policemen attached to one of the banks shot at the tanker driver, they regrouped and stormed the bank in anger. They first demanded that the policeman who shot their colleague be released to them. When their demands proved abortive, they took the law into their hands. They contributed fuel from their tanks and set the bank ablaze. The entire situation caused a stampede as both workers and bankers scrambled to escape from the back of the bank to safety. The drivers were still on the rampage in the first bank when they heard that the policeman had taken refuge in the next bank. Armed with that information, they simply went over to the said bank and carried out same carnage, irrespective of the presence of innocent bystanders. They also attacked innocent policemen going about their own businesses. They stabbed no fewer than three policemen who didn’t know what was happening.”

This is unacceptable in any decent society. Without doubt, it was bad for the killer-cop to demand bribe from the driver. It was even very wrong for him to shoot the truck driver for not acceding to his illicit demand. On both scores, the mobile policeman was culpable. Even at that, it would have been wrong for the banks to release him to an angry mob because we know what the result would have been. He would have been skinned alive! We may say what is wrong with applying such Mosaic Law! But everything is wrong with it in this age and times. Two wrongs cannot make a right; indeed all the wrongs in the world would never make a right.

This is why the tanker drivers who participated in the arson should be fished out and prosecuted. No one, no matter how essential their services are to the nation, should take the laws into their hands. How has setting ablaze two banks helped their cause? If anything, it has compounded their woes because the law would now be applied in full force to serve as deterrence to other people who might want to be lawless. One might have been tempted to ask for leniency if setting ablaze the banks had succeeded in bringing back to life their ill-fated colleague.

When tankers were falling or catching fire almost daily on our roads, we called for enlightenment for tanker drivers. We asked that they be trained regularly so that they can imbibe the necessary road safety culture required for their operations. Mercifully, the Lagos State Drivers’ Institute (LASDRI) is there for them to hone their skills. They need to be trained on how to react to cases like the Apapa incident, too.

A time there was when tanker drivers played very patriotic role in the country’s affairs. One recalls with nostalgia the Frank Kokori years during the struggle to end military rule and entrench democracy. Then, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) with Kokori as general secretary then usually joined forces with other critical stakeholders like the National Union of Banks Insurance and Financial Institutions Employees (NUBIFIE) and Labour generally to ground socio-economic activities, as part of efforts to send the military back to their barracks. I remember that no strike was complete in those days of the struggle until NUPENG’s participation had been confirmed. Even the governments then knew that NUPENG was the union to beat because with NUPENG on strike, movement would be grounded nationwide in a matter of days, and no government worth its salt wants that.

Unfortunately, it appears that the strike option by the tanker drivers which was then applied functionally later became dysfunctional. For, after the return to civil rule, oil workers continued to threaten to down tools at the slightest provocation. They were eager to withdraw their services over the most flimsy excuses. They fought the Lagos State government some years back when it ordered them not to park their trucks on bridges in the state. As far as they are concerned, they should be allowed to park anywhere because they lift petroleum products for the country.

It is needless asking the police to thoroughly investigate this incident with a view to serving the killer-cop his deserved comeuppance because this is not one incident that anyone should attempt to cover up. The damage done and those to whom it was done would simply not allow that. Policemen did not start to take bribe today; unscrupulous ones among them have been doing it for decades. The difference between bribe taking then and now is that, in the good old days, it was known, in Yorubaland for instance, as ‘owo eyin’ (money usually collected from/at the back). The back as in the policemen who wanted to collect it making sure they asked questions that would take the driver they wanted to extort to the back of the vehicle, away from the prying eyes of passengers, where they felt reasonably safe to collect the bribe. I remember as a child, I would use ‘corner eye’ to follow some of the drivers until they parted with the bribe and I would be chastised not to do so again. But that was then. These days, policemen who take bribes do not care whether anyone is watching; they take it right in the presence of passengers, with some even arguing that the money is too small and that the driver should ‘top it’!

As I said earlier, this is bad enough. But when a policeman would now pull the trigger simply because a driver refused to play ball is evidence that something is wrong somewhere. The Nigeria Police Force has to do some soul-searching about the people it allows to carry arms. More than anyone else, our policemen bearing arms need periodic psychiatric tests to determine their continued mental fitness to use the arms. The Apapa incident was not a case of accidental discharge from all the accounts. So, it is inexcusable.

Again, the spontaneous violence that followed the killing of the truck driver is symptomatic of the pent-up anger in many Nigerians. Things are tough and people are angry. That can be the main reason that would make them react the way they did on Wednesday. As for the tanker drivers in particular, they would not have been on that road if fuel haulage is done by rail or if our refineries are working well. Imagine people who had been on the queue for God-knows-when, already tensed up, now being approached by a policeman for bribe.

This case must be used to stress the point that tanker drivers, like other citizens, irrespective of how essential they think their services are to the nation, are not above the law. The same applies to the killer-cop.