Lagos- Asaba Highway Of Extortion
NORMALLY, a journey from Lagos to Asaba in Delta State should take about six hours, all things being equally in a country where they are hardly so, including good roads.
Because of COVID- 19 pandemic, which has occasioned numerous duplicate and unnecessary roadblocks and checkpoints, such journey could take over eight hours if travelling in a private vehicle and over 12 hours in commercial vehicles.
Interstate travel ban, which has now been lifted, created an opportunity for some security operatives to “help” themselves through “collections” on the highway.
There were all manners of them in different types of uniforms, ranging from policemen, soldiers, men of the Federal Road Safety Corps ( FRSC), Nigeria Customs Service ( NCS), states’ enforcement officers, Lagos State Traffic Management Authority ( LASTMA), including overzealous touts working ( collecting money) for them on the roads.
Some of the checkpoints were manned by as few as two policemen, with their superiors seated somewhere not too far away, but on the alert, while others, especially at boundaries between states, had as many as 15 different officers answerable to different superiors. With over 100 checkpoints between Lagos and Asaba, not to talk of soldiers, many wondered how many policemen were then left to undertake routine duties in Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Edo and Delta states on that stretch of road?
Some of the roadblocks were so close that sometimes, you could see the next one a few metres away; it was an opportunity they must have been waiting for. When it rained, some roadblocks were deserted, yet a few policemen would not leave. And when they are drenched, motorists dared not argue or waste time, else they were made to disembark and get wet too. Why were so many people on the road when a ban on interstate travel was still in force?
“We have to travel for some reasons. We would not have travelled if there were no vehicles plying the route and we had to pay double the normal price for this trip,” explained John ( surname withheld), a passenger in an Onitsha- bound Toyota Sienna car. “Me, I am going for a burial in Imo State. I had to travel because there were vehicles and they collected double the normal price.
“The driver has been settling these people right from Lagos and has appealled to us to support him, saying the number of roadblocks was more than he estimated,” added a female passenger in another vehicle parked by the roadside.
“We are even tired already and we don’t know when we would get home; there are too many checks on the road. It is as if they all poured to the road to collect money. Is it that their superiors don’t know what they are doing here,” a female passenger asked rhetorically. Ebuka ( surname withheld), a transporter plying LagosOwerri route said he had been making such trips even with the ban on interstate travels. “All we do is settle the policemen and soldiers on the road and they let us pass. It is a matter of money. “But the roadblocks are too many today. I wonder how many policemen are left at the stations. Some will collect N200, while most collect N500 and soldiers collect between N1000 and N2000.
“We are tired of sitting at home doing nothing while the bill keeps pilling up. It is from this means that we feed our families and sustain ourselves. If we don’t work, we won’t eat,” he stated.
Reminded again that they were supposed to remain at home, Ebuka said: “If I don’t work, who would feed my family? Is it government or these politicians ruling us in Nigeria?
“My worry now is that I don’t know when we would get to Owerri with all these stops here and there and how much I will have spent by the time we get there, as I am likely to have spent more that budgeted, thereby reducing my own profit.”
“Initially, I was not travelling, but when I saw my colleagues going and coming while I struggled to eat, I had to join them. At least at the end of the day, I would get something. It is better than doing nothing or begging for food, as a man. “But if things continue like this, I would stop, because it be like monkey dey work, baboon dey chop,” noted an Asaba- bound transporter, who identified himself as simply Okpara.
On Wednesday, June 24, even with a ‘ Letter of Pass for the purpose of travel for burial,’ between June 23 and 30 from the Presidential Task Force ( PTF) on COVID19, that journey took over 12 hours, no thanks to the numerous ‘ checks or collection point’ and roadblocks mounted to aid that.
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